I decided to talk about Cooler by the Lake after receiving a letter from Larry in which he told me, "The Chicago novel is about half done, and should be completed by the end of the summer--a laugh riot, David, absolutely the funniest book you ever read. Vietnam is not mentioned once and nobody dies."
I recollected that there was plenty Chicago in Close Quarters and Paco's Story so I figured that war could figure prominently in Cooler by the Lake. So I reread Close Quarters and Paco's Story and listed all the Chicago references and there are a shit-load of them. Then I bought Cooler by the Lake and raced through it to confirm my suspicions. Not a rigorous scientific method but then rocket science this ain't. It's more like a paper I wrote in college about another Chicago writer's book, Saul Bellow's Henderson The Rain King which was mostly an inventory of animals and animal images. Dr. Donna Gerstenberger hated it and I got a C. She'd probably give me no better on this one.
I looked up interviews with Heinemann to see what he told others about Cooler by the Lake. I found an interview with Eric James Schroeder in Vietnam We've All Been There (p. 162) in which Heinemann says, "It's called Cooler by the Lake: Vietnam is not mentioned once, and nobody dies and everybody gets laid." In Contemporary Authors, Larry calls Cooler by the Lake, "...a purposely funny book, a Marx Brothers movie of a book. It will be, as the saying goes a laugh riot; I need to lighten up."
In an interview with Studs Terkel, published in The Great Divide, Larry tells a story which he connects to the Vietnam war explicitly. He mentions Vietnam directly three times in the course of his story about driving a CTA bus during the summer of 1968, the famous Democratic National Convention. I recognized the story because I'd heard Larry tell the story. Also I'd read a version of the story in Cooler by the Lake (pp. 84-86). It becomes an episode in the work history of the hero, Max Nutmeg. And Max (no Vietnam vet, he) behaved exactly the way Larry behaved when he drove bus for CTA. Quote from Larry Heinemann, with Studs Terkel about Larry Heinemann, "Anyone gave me an argument, I threw em off the bus. This transfer's not good - Wooosh! - get out!. I was never that way before Vietnam." ...Terkel, p. 253. Quote from Cooler by the Lake, "So Max got the job. And right from the first day Max was your worst bus driver nightmare come true... He tore up transfers, threw people off his bus, "breezed" the stops when he felt like it, and generally drove the bus like a bulldozer..." p. 84 Cooler by the Lake.
It's a mistake to see Max and Larry as the same guy, just as Larry isn't Dosier in Close Quarters or Paco in Paco's Story. But they are cousins. In his interview with Schroeder, Larry admits that he's an author like Mark Twain, in Life on the Mississippi who tries to describe details of their work.
So what's Larry up to in Cooler by the Lake? Is he still pouring out his rage at having been a part of an evil war? I think so. And I think he knows he is. The book is a laugh riot. I've read it twice through completely and frequently laughed aloud. It's a book made for a bent reference librarian. As with his first two books, I needed to look up arcane references. Mostly, though, in Cooler by the Lake he explains them in detail. In Close Quarters he refers to Jocko Conlan (p. 36). Who the hell is that I wondered? And Burn 'em up Barnes (p. 82). Who the hell was he? By the context I suspect Jocko Conlan is connected to the All American game of baseball. And "Burn em" Barnes is in a list with Mario Andretti and A. J. Foyt so I figure he's a race car driver. I tried half heartedly to look them up, but it was too much like work so I decided I'd just ask Larry next time I saw him.
But the war references in Cooler by the Lake fascinated me. The hastiest reading (unless you are a book reviewer) reveals that Cooler by the Lake is infiltrated by war references. Far more references to war are contained in Heinemann's Chicago novel, Cooler by the Lake than Chicago references in Close Quarters and Paco's Story. These references are often bitter and anti-military in a manner typical of a certain sort of Vietnam veteran, the sort who came back and would not shut up about the war, the vet who says, "It's going to be an evil thing in our lives, and nothing's going to change it." Terkel, p. 256. What is Larry up to here? I knew why Close Quarters had umpteen Chicago references. The connections to home from Vietnam are expected. The hero is "Dosier from Chicago" (p. 119) that's who he is identified as.
Even Paco's Story has an arcane Chicago reference on the first page - "alewife scuz."
Chicago doesn't appear again in Paco's Story until page 120 but when it does, it's a familiar story by now, "My father drove a Chicago city bus ... " Gallagher tells us. Contemporary Authors tells us that Larry Heinemann was, "The son of a Chicago bus driver" p. 188 Contemporary Authors, vol. 31. Gallagher and Larry Heinemann are not the same person, but there are similarities.
So there are couple of Vietnam references in Cooler by the Lake and Larry said there wouldn't be, so what? I think the lies people tell are important. I think it's important to examine the role of war in a laugh riot Marx Brothers of a novel. Larry's "no Vietnam" is more of a dare than a lie or even a promise. Maybe Larry should be forgiven a couple of Vietnam war references popping up accidental like in a comic novel. Maybe. But the references go way beyond accident. A major character, Deadwood Dave, fails to appear for his induction physical "during the war" (p. 224). Guess which one. A mention of Little Saigon (pp. 119-120) "because of all the Southeast Asian refugees who had settled there since the war" and on page 143 " ... Mr. Bouillion fell asleep reading Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly and quietly died of a stroke."
As you all know, the full title of Tuchman's book is March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. Larry's little joke. Cooler by the Lake almost encompasses as many wars as Tuchman's book. Larry's Cooler by the Lake reminded me some of Forrest Gump in its comic tone, but it reminded me more of A Country Made by War: From the Revolution to Vietnam - The Story of America's Rise to Power by Geoffrey Perret.
Cooler by the Lake thus becomes Larry Heinemann's effective comic vehicle for anti-war diatribes and harangues, a fiction counterpart to Perret's A Country Made By War.
Tim Sandlin in his New York Times Book Review says the pages of this book resemble a maze or a minefield. He's right, the war references lie in wait around every corner, permeating the very warp and woof of the novel. I've got more than 40 pages of war references [wave them] so time requires me to pick and choose from the more interesting.
Let's look at and examine some of Cooler by the Lake's war references. These references to war appear at key points of the plot and act to postpone Max Nutmeg's attainment of his goal and to tempt us, the readers, to rush through and ignore these references to find out what happens to good old Max.
"The result is that the average American cannot move without bumping into the country's military past.
At a thousand unnoticed points America's military past impinges on his daily life. Far from being separate and apart from it, that history helps make his life what it is, has been and will be.
The story continues." --A Country Made By War, Geoffrey Perret.
Please seek out and buy a copy of Cooler by the Lake - many copies are on display at Notre Dame's bookstore in paperback - more than I've seen everywhere else put together - you have a rare opportunity to obtain this increasingly scarce book. A book almost as difficult to obtain as the late Gus Hasford's The Phantom Blooper.