Hasford, Gustav

(1948–1993)

   Gus Hasford was born in Alabama in 1948. He reached the age of 20 in time to serve his country in Vietnam. His autobiographical novel THE SHORT-TIMERS (1979) has been regarded as one of the most disturbing and authentic narratives of the Vietnam War, along with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990) and MICHAEL HERR’s Dispatches (1978). Private Joker, narrator of The Short-Timers, is Hasford’s alter ego. Hasford wrote and published two additional novels, The Phantom Blooper (1990), tracing the further adventures of Private Joker, this time in a more poetic idiom, and A Gypsy Good Time (1991), a private-eye narrative. STANLEY KUBRICK hinted that Hasford worked with Michael Herr in adapting his novel to the screen as FULL METAL JACKET, but although Hasford might have initially been consulted, the completed screenplay is believed to be mainly Kubrick’s work. Hasford petitioned for screenwriting credit for the Academy Award–nominated screenplay. After the war, Hasford lived in southern California with a college librarian. Symptoms of emotional instability developed in Hasford in 1988, when he was arrested in San Luis Obispo “for stealing nearly 10,000 books from dozens of libraries in the United States and Britain,” according to Marc Leepson, book editor for The Veteran magazine. He served three months “of a six-month sentence after promising to turn over more stolen-book money with the proceeds of his second novel. ” After living in San Clemente and El Cajon, he fell ill from diabetes in Tacoma,Washington, in 1991, and was treated at a Veterans Administration hospital. Against the advice of his friends, he then went to Europe. He died of heart failure while visiting a Greek island on January 29, 1993.

   Reference

   Marc Leepson, “Gus Hasford: The Life and Death of a Soldier,” Baltimore Sun, (March 28, 1993).