War Literature Megathread: slightly above the eighth grade level

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > War Literature Megathread: slightly above the eighth grade level

Zeris: Apr 15, 2003; Quality posting direct from my brain to your face holes.

War is a loving annoying thing to explain to civilians, so most of us either skip the subject entirely, bury our personalities in internet forums, or drink to excess. A few nerds throughout history have taken, in their quest to make sense of the senseless, to the literary arts: poetry, fiction/novels, and even the occasional memoir or research project. These are their�stories.

The following list is delineated by genre and war. If you�d like a contribution of your own added to the OP, please make a note in your post. Otherwise, discuss!

Fiction

The Things They Carried
Tim O�Brien
(Vietnam)
Taught in high schools, this novel is made up of several chapters of close-strung short stories involving the same characters and a fictional narrator that closely resembles the actual author, who was an infantryman in Vietnam. This �realistic� fiction is commonly deployed in war literature, for one or more practical reasons: protecting identities/actions, filling gaps in memories, �improving� the point of a story, etc. TTTC has given us several famous lines including, �There�s no such thing as a true war story.�
It�s a quick read, and highly recommended.

Dispatches
Michael Herr
(Vietnam)
Michael Herr was a journalist who covered Vietnam and traveled around the country, putting himself at the sort of risk that many journalists notoriously avoided during the war. He saw just about everything the regular line troops saw, and wrote it honestly. Dispatches is not journalistic nonfiction or literary journalism, it is fictionalized (this is not immediately apparent to some readers, including myself). But if you have spent any time in a war, it rings drat true. Michael Herr contributed to the writing of Apocalypse Now, and it shows in both the tone of the film and the tone of the book.
Fun fact: Next on my reading list is The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer and is a Vietnamese-American�s response to the single-sided narrative at work in Apocalypse Now.

Redeployment
Phil Klay
(GWOT/Iraq)
US Marine Corps public affairs officer pulled out all the stops for this National Book Award winning collection of short stories about shooting dogs, taking credit for your buddy�s kill, loving strippers, the Vietnam-whorehouse-burning-stack-of-quarters urban legend, and more. The stories are hit or miss, and he isn�t shy about redeploying the stories and legends (see above) we’ve all heard a million times over for a fresh, civilian audience. He�s at his best when he writes about a chaplain advising a company of Marines that have lost themselves in the killing, or about a Foreign Service Officer navigating the corrupt (on both sides) system of aid-giving in Iraq.

Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut
(WWII/Europe)
Kurt Vonnegut writes about farts, poops, time travel, musty basementy mushroom smells of a wet-dream cleanup, tits, and dry-heaving oneself to literal death in the scorched basement of post-bombing Dresden wreckage. A quick read, and a good read. Vonnegut doesn�t waste your time getting to the point too quickly (so that you might make sense of things before they�ve time to sink in) or spoon-feeding you the point. His moves and their aftereffects sneak up on you, ripping the foundation out from your smirk like it was a barn in Dresden. So it goes.

Catch-22
Joseph Heller
(WWII/Europe)
Another quintessential WWII novel. The Air Force pilot Yossarian realizes he�s going to die if he keeps flying bomber missions, but his only way out is to fake severe insanity so they�ll take him off the line. But it doesn�t work so easily as he�d like, hence the book title�s survival into present vernacular. Anyway, the moments of comedic idiocy familiar to anyone who�s had to sweep snow, paint rocks, shine something shiny, or whatever like that will be very clear, and enjoyable.

Nonfiction

Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
(Spanish Civil War, expat perspective)
George is at it again. This time he drags his wife with him to Spain so he can cover the war as a �journalist� and is given a soldier�s outfit and command of a squad as soon as they realize he�s not an idiot. He writes the war as a soldier on a foggy front line with a bunch of fascist-hating rebels, the losing minority within the losing side of a proxy war (communists vs. fascists) in the years preceding WWII. Orwell�s own side is forced out by Russian-supported communists, and he barely escape a purge that several of his friends do not. He also gets shot in the neck. Orwell�s plain-spoken prose does a great job here, and contemporary editions of this book shift his two long-winded chapters on the political nuances of the war into an appendix (a mistake, in my opinion).

Where Men Win Glory
Jon Krakauer
(GWOT/Biography)
Jon Krakauer squeezes his political agenda into a Pat Tillman biography. No doubt, Tillman is polarizing and generally a badass at whatever he did � including pissing off his team/squad/platoon. The truth that might resolve all of the conspiracy theories about �what really happened� will probably die with the Rangers who were there. So it goes. Tillman�s death was mishandled at multiple levels, and Krakauer definitely goes a step too far in making it the fault of the entire Bush administration AND the military-industrial-congressional complex, but whatever. That stuff is so transparent that anyone fooled by it deserves it. The book is still good, and Krakauer can still report like nobody else. Worth a look into why some crazy rear end dude would leave a multi-million NFL contract to fight dirt farmers for freedom and fratricide.

On War
By Carl von Clausewitz
(Europe/philosophy/whatever)
War is an extension of politics, or so people say after reading this. That�s not quite accurate, but close enough to fool most people into believing you�ve read Clausewitz. It�s sort of the Western answer to Sun Tzu�s Art of War, perhaps in conjunction with Machiavelli�s The Prince.
I�ll be honest, I last read this over 10 years ago. It uses historical examples to explain important military stuff like flanking good, logistics good, fog of war bad. Wikipedia does a better job than this.

Poetry
Brian Turner is an Iraq war veteran and poet with a strong body of work published to date. He wrote �Hurt Locker� which lent its name to the award-winning Kathryn Bigelow trainwreck about superpowered EODs that lose themselves in stateside grocery stores.

The coolest poets in my opinion were minted in the WWI trenches (Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon), with notable mention going to Vietnam (Bruce Weigl, Yusef Komunyakaa). Yusef Komunyakaa wrote the most gut-wrenching poem I have ever read. It�s about the Vietnam Memorial in DC:

code:

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn�t,
dammit: No tears. 
I�m stone. I�m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I�m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap�s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman�s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird�s 
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet�s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I�m a window.
He�s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman�s trying to erase names:
No, she�s brushing a boy�s hair.

Brian Turner�s �Here, Bullet� is pretty metal:

HERE, BULLET

code:

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta�s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you�ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel�s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue�s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Stuff I have kinda read, heard is good, or have had recommended to me:

All Quiet On the Western Front
(WWI, German Perspective)

You Know When the Men Are Gone
Siobhan Fallon
(GWOT, Dependent perspective)
Rarely, a dependent writes about what it�s like, well, when the men are gone. This is the best known book out there about the contemporary state of it. On my bookshelf, still unread.

Zinky Boys
Svetlana Alexievich
(Soviety-Afghanistan war, Soviet perspective)
Translated into English. A series of interviews with Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan. Supposedly depressing and typically Russian and very well regarded.

On Killing
David Grossman
(WWII/Vietnam)
How we used psychological studies from WII to improve line soldiers� firing rates for the Vietnam war. Many soldiers were not actually firing their weapons (according to the studies), and psychological studies were applied to military training to improve soldiers� engagement on the battlefield. Hence, On Killing. It gets deeper than that, I�m told, but I haven�t read this one yet.

The Forever War
Joe Haldeman
(Vietnam)
All I know is this forum loves this book, and I need to stop loaning out my copy. It�s a sci-fi book about future soldiers losing their contemporary lives to time-space dilation in order to fight a war light-years away, and returning to a society that literally doesn�t understand them (because they�re all old and weird or something). The metaphor is fairly straightforward.

Afterwar
Nancy Sherman
(GWOT/Veterans)
Nancy Sherman is a professor of philosophy at Georgetown. She has worked with the Navy and DoD to figure out that gosh darned Moral Injury thing people keep talking about. I had the chance to interview her recently for a piece of my own, and she is smart and cool, but I am not entirely sold on the whole moral injury concept. I think it needs to mature a little further (which could be read as a comment as much on the mental health profession and society as a comment on veterans) before we can prescribe fixes. No doubt, investigating the concept of moral injury will probably get us further into understand that civil-military divide. The problem is we don�t all digest the philosophical realities of our lives in the same way, so it�s pretty damned hard if not impossible to diagnose (let alone solve) the issues at hand.

The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane
(Civil War)
Classic civil war novel about regaining honor on the battlefield.

Sebastian Junger
(multiple GWOT books)
Pop culture slobbers all over Junger, and he makes some cool points. He also skips over a lot of the ugliness of war that other writers aren�t shy of. He doesn�t receive a lot of criticism for that, but he should. There is a strong cultural appetite for band-of-brothers platitudes about the honor of service, the unique and everlasting bonds forged overseas with battle buddies and how it just makes us so drat different (implicitly better) versus civilians. He also spins PTSD into an argument about tribalism and how disjointed modern society is, but the intellectual rigor is lacking in his work. Take it for what you will � it�s a voice lacking in previous wars� cultural discussions, so it could be worse.

Thank You For Your Service
David Finkel
(GWOT/society)
David Finkel tells post-war pornographic tales of hell at the VA, suicidal veterans, and people whose lives were awful before they joined staying awful or getting (surprise) even worse afterwards. People eat it up in the absence of more honest investigation into the causes of why veterans are having a poo poo time at readjustment. See: Sebastian Junger. This book wouldn�t be on the list if it weren�t well recognized and lauded, which forces it into the conversation.

Claimed/Upcoming

Waroduce:
Sympathy for the Devil
Matterhorn

Zeris fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Aug 17, 2016

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 04:25

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 05:40

Zeris: Apr 15, 2003; Quality posting direct from my brain to your face holes.

Cool, anyone who "claims" a writeup (or wants to improve on mine) is welcome to do so, and I will add to the OP.

I humbly request we err on the side of writing effortposts of our construction, in the spirit of being literary nerds.

I forgot about graphic novels, but would be willing to throw in a White Donkey writeup if anyone is interested. I'm not sure what else is out there and fits the genre - Maus, maybe?

Zeris fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Aug 17, 2016

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 04:43

Zeris: Apr 15, 2003; Quality posting direct from my brain to your face holes.

666 posted:

Marlantes looks like a profoundly damaged individual. O'Brien too, but there seems to be less rage involved.

Picked up the short timers, the things they carried, and dispatches.

Man, war novels are like the flame that attracts moths. It should be clear enough that the message is to stay away, but the same thing keeps happening, over and over.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2017 09:10

Zeris: Apr 15, 2003; Quality posting direct from my brain to your face holes.

Hey nerds, Military Writers Guild is seeking submissions:

http://www.middlewestpress.com/2017/11/mil-writers-guild-announces-2018-why-we.html

If anyone wants to workshop their stuff I'm happy to get involved. We can get a slack room going. I am probably going to submit something too.

quote:

The working title and theme of the anthology is �Why We Write,� and will regard how individual military-writing practitioners promote professional and/or popular discourse, while engaging audiences and creating communities through military topics, themes, milieu, or history.

Established in 2015, Military Writers Guild is an international group of writers who �advocate, collaborate, and promote� military writing in all its forms, including literary and genre fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism, and more.

�MWG's mission has always been about fostering high-quality writing about the military and war in whatever form a writer might practice. But just as important is critically thinking and talking about the craft itself. By working with Middle West Press in the solicitation and promotion of this anthology project, we hope to advance in both of those goals," says Adin Dobkin, the recently elected president of the Military Writers Guild.

Submissions to this anthology likely to be successful include, but are not limited to:

Discussions of research, writing, and/or publishing as a craft, particularly in a given genre or mode of communication. Examples: Military science-fiction; poetry; speech writing; blogging; professional & academic journals; etc.

Descriptions of concrete techniques in researching, writing, reading, and publishing that may be used by other military writers. Examples: Translating military jargon for poetry audiences; How to realistically depict diversity in the ranks.

Discussions of mutual gaps in understanding among civil and military communities, and ways to address the through the practice and performance of written work.
Explorations of historically notable military writers and/or texts. While Sun Tzu, Homer, and Clausewitz will, no doubt, be present in the anthology, the anthology's editors encourage consideration of voices and works less frequently cited.

Analysis of trends or sub-genres in "military writing," such as military-spouse blogs; "space marine" epics; military thrillers; poems about drones; comic books and cartoons about military life, etc.
Stories of success (or failure) illustrating mentorship, professional development, and/or personal growth in the practice of military writing.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2017 15:35

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