Why Vietnam? The hero of Why Are We In Vietnam is an 18-year-old Texas genius named D. J. - a self-styled "Disc Jockey to the world." Reminiscing during a party of Dallas big wheels on the eve of his induction into the Army, the boy takes off on a frightening, scabrous, hilarious account of a hunting expedition in the wilds of Alaska, where a man's tough self-image is destroyed unless he comes back with the head of a thousand-pound Grizzer. Without a mention of Vietnam until the final page, Mailer's rhythmic, vibrating prose brilliantly creates the spirit of The Hunt and the Hunters who make Vietnams inevitable.