Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties

Robert Stone's memoir Prime Green is above all an argument for the importance of international travel in one's development. Stone recounts his life between 1958 (when as a 21-year-old he was sent by the Navy to Antarctica and South Africa) through the 1960s (when he spent time in New York, New Orleans, London and Paris) and finally to the early 1970s (when he traveled to Vietnam as a field reporter covering the war). His essays are episodic and not always enlightening, but without these experiences Dog Soldiers (1974) and A Flag for Sunrise (1981) would not exist. More writers should follow his example.