A journalist won the 1988 National Book Award for non-fiction with a book about the Vietnam War, and a newspaper columnist took the fiction prize for a novel about the murder of a girl in Georgia. Neil Sheehan, 52, author of ``A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam,'' and Peter Dexter, 45, who wrote ``Paris Trout,'' were honored Tuesday night at an awards ceremony attended by 500 people. The authors each received $10,000 and a Louise Nevelson sculpture. ``I feel like a man who was on a long voyage of discovery ... who's finally come home,'' said Sheehan, his eyes damp with tears as he accepted the award for his book, which took him 16 years to write. Sheehan was United Press International's Vietnam bureau chief in 1962 and worked for The New York Times from 1964 to 1972. He obtained the Pentagon Papers in 1971 while working for the newspaper. Sheehan is the author of ``The Arnheiter Affair.'' ``A Bright Shining Lie'' tells the story of the Vietnam War through the eyes of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, a troubled but dedicated career officer who spoke out against the brutality and ineffectiveness of the early U.S. strategy in Southeast Asia. Sheehan, a resident of Washington, said he wrote the book hoping that ``it would help my country ... come to grips with the war. ``The most moving reactions I get are from Vietnam veterans who write or call and say, `You put me back there. That's what it was like. For the first time I know what it was all about. I know why it happened the way it happened,''' he said. ``That's very moving. That's what I wanted to achieve.'' Dexter's novel is about the murder of a 14-year-old black girl by a white man in a small Georgia town just after World War II. The book was inspired by a shooting that took place when he was a child in Milledgeville, Ga. ``I just started putting that together and remembering things and that sort of became the spine of the novel,'' he said. Dexter, a columnist for The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee and a frequent contributor to national magazines, said the novel's success would not lead him to give up his column, which he writes three times a week. ``I'm not someone to hole up in the woods and produce a novel every two years. I like being on the street and hearing different voices,'' said Dexter, who has written two other novels. The books honored Tuesday were published by Random House, whose editorial director, Jason Epstein, also was honored. Epstein was the first winner of the National Book Awards Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. ``This is really a happenstance,'' Robert Loomis, executive editor of the publishing house, said of the awards sweep. Other fiction nominees were: Don DeLillo for ``Libra''; J.F. Powers for ``Wheat That Springeth Green''; Mary McGarry Morris for her first novel, ``Vanished''; and Anne Tyler for ``Breathing Lessons.'' The other non-fiction nominees were: Peter Gay for his biography, ``Freud: A Life For Our Time''; Eric Foner for ``Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877''; Brenda Maddox for ``Nora,'' a biography of James Joyce's lifelong companion and muse; and Jack McLaughlin's ``Jefferson and Monticello.'' The National Book Awards, established 38 years ago, are awarded by a panel of judges chosen by the National Book Awards Inc., a non-profit institution dedicated to creating a wider audience for American literature.
