Hasford attended the Clarion Workshop[3] and associated with various science fiction writers of the 1970s, including Arthur Byron Cover and David J. Skal. He had works published in magazines and anthologies such as Space and Time and Damon Knight's Orbit series. He also published the poem "Bedtime Story" in a 1972 edition of Winning Hearts and Minds, the first anthology of writing about the war by veterans.[4] The poem was reprinted in Carrying the Darkness in 1985.[5]
The Short-Timers was published in 1979 and became a best-seller, described in Newsweek as "[t]he best work of fiction about the Vietnam War".[1] It was adapted into the feature film Full Metal Jacket (1987), directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay by Hasford, Kubrick, and screenwriter Michael Herr was nominated for an Academy Award. Hasford's actual contributions were a subject of dispute among the three, and ultimately Hasford chose not to attend the Oscar ceremonies.[1]
In 1985, Hasford had borrowed 98 books from the Sacramento, California, public library but never returned them. An arrest warrant for misdemeanor grand theft was issued, but local authorities were unable to find him.[7] In March 1988, shortly before the Academy Awards ceremony, campus police from California Polytechnic State UniversityinSan Luis Obispo, California, found nearly 10,000 library books in his rented storage locker. At that time, he had 87 overdue books and five years of Civil War Times magazine issues checked out from the Cal Poly-SLO library; the materials were initially valued at $3,000 (they were later revalued at $20,000).[8]
Hasford's book collection included books borrowed (and never returned) from dozens of libraries across the United States, from libraries in Australia and the United Kingdom, and, allegedly, books taken from the homes of acquaintances. Among them were 19th-century books on Edgar Allan Poe and the American Civil War. Hasford had obtained borrowing privileges at Cal Poly-SLO as a California resident, using the residential address of a motel near campus and a false Social Security number.[7][9]
In June 1988, he was charged with two counts of grand theft and ten counts of possession of stolen property.[10] Judge Harry Woolpert of the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court scheduled the trial hearings to begin on December 5.[11] During the trial, Hasford rearranged to plead guilty to possession of stolen property. On January 4, 1989, Hasford was sentenced to six months' imprisonment (of which he served three months) and promised to pay $1,100 in restitution from the royalties of his future works. He was also ordered to pay the shipping costs for the return of 748 books to nine libraries throughout the United States.[12][13]
In a form letter addressed to friends and family, Hasford claimed that he wanted the books to research a never-published book on the Civil War. He described his difficulties as "a vicious attack launched against me by Moral Majority fanatics backed up by the full power of the Fascist State."[14]
In 1990, he published a second novel, The Phantom Blooper,[15] which was a sequel to The Short-Timers.[16] The sequel was intended to be the second installment of a "Vietnam Trilogy", but Hasford died before writing the third installment.[17] Hasford's final novel titled A Gypsy Good Time, a hardboiled, noir detective story set in Los Angeles, was published in 1992.
Hasford, impoverished[18][17] and suffering from untreated diabetes, moved to the Greek island of Aegina and died there of heart failure on 29 January 1993, aged 45. He is interred at Winston Memorial Cemetery in Haleyville, Alabama.[1]
^Barry, Jan; Paquet, Basil T.; Rottmann, Larry, eds. (1972). "Bedtime Story". Gustavhasford.com. Winning Hearts and Minds. 1st Casualty Press. Archived from the original on September 1, 2011. Retrieved August 2, 2012.
^Ehrhart, W.D., ed. (1985). "Bedtime Story". Gustavhasford.com. Texas Tech University Press. Archived from the original on November 12, 2003. Retrieved August 2, 2012.
^Bierce, Ambrose. "Unpublished: The Vietnam Trilogy". gustavhasford.com. Archived from the original on 2011-03-04. "Apparently by the time he'd finished The Phantom Blooper, Gus was already planning to write a third Viet Nam novel. Apparently, not much work was ever completed on this book, which had many possible titles, one of them Exit Wounds. The story involved Private Joker taking a job as a reporter in Los Angeles in the years after the war."