{"id":36528,"date":"2014-12-10T09:14:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T14:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=36528"},"modified":"2014-12-10T09:30:23","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T14:30:23","slug":"redeployment-by-phil-klay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/redeployment-by-phil-klay\/","title":{"rendered":"Redeployment by Phil Klay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Redeployment\"<\/a>This year, the venerable National Book Foundation<\/a> has clearly favorited Phil Klay<\/a>. First he was bestowed the youthful “5 Under 35<\/a>” mantel, and then finished out with the coveted\u00a0National Book Award for Fiction<\/a>. Over the summer,\u00a0he also made the shortlist for the 2014 Frank O\u2019Connor International Short Story Award<\/a>. And yes, of course, he’s currently topping all those ‘best-of’ lists. Seriously major honors for a debut title indeed.<\/p>\n

As a U.S. Marine Corps\u00a0veteran who\u00a0served in Iraq\u2019s Anbar Province for 13 months\u00a0over 2007 into 2008, Klay\u00a0used writing fiction to process his experiences: “… writing the book was the only way that I knew how to start thinking [about answers to impossibly difficult\u00a0questions he faced after returning from war],” he said in his emotional, tightly-held-together NBA acceptance speech<\/a>,\u00a0“…\u00a0not just ’cause there’s a rigor involved in turning fictional stories into some kind of an emotional truth, but because when you write, it opens up the possibility of other people responding\u00a0… for me, writing this book …\u00a0I can’t think of a more important conversation to be having. War’s too strange to be processed alone.” To make the conversation as effective\u00a0as possible, Klay\u00a0got his MFA at Hunter College to speak clearly to civilians, and attended\u00a0the NYU Veterans Writing Workshop<\/a>\u00a0to communicate accurately with fellow military. Clearly, he was prepared.<\/p>\n

In Redeployment<\/em>, Klay takes on the first-person narratives of 12 diverse soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, of various ages, backgrounds, and\u00a0responsibilities; audible narrator Craig Klein<\/a> breathes haunting life into each. Some of Klay’s\u00a0troubled dozen are caught in the horrors of war, others are trying to readjust to\u00a0what comes after survival.<\/p>\n

The titular “Redeployment” \u2013 quite possibly’s the dozen’s\u00a0best \u2013 opens the collection with visceral horror, about\u00a0a soldier who finally comes home\u00a0to his wife after shooting too many corpse-eating canines\u00a0in the “no-shit war zone,” and has to\u00a0face a wrenchingly uncertain future for their own beloved, aging dog. In “After Action Report,” one soldier takes responsibility for a killing he didn’t commit,\u00a0hoping to shield\u00a0his\u00a0younger friend from the guilt and grief of taking another person’s life. In “Bodies,” a young man who shocks his high school girlfriend by enlisting, gets assigned to\u00a0Mortuary Affairs and deals with body parts, both enemy and friendly.<\/p>\n

“Money As a Weapons System” confronts the mismanagement of U.S. dollars in a surreal, blackly comic situation of forcing baseball gloves, then uniforms, onto local Iraqi youths who have no interest in the\u00a0American sport, merely for the sake of a photo opportunity to send back to an unsuspecting Congressman. “In Vietnam They Had Whores” examines the desperation to make any sort of human connection,\u00a0but sometimes paying for companionship proves to be\u00a0more lonely than being alone. “Prayer in the Furnace” presents a military chaplain who must come to terms with frightening secrets revealed by a soldier about his less-than-honorable\u00a0fellow men who have seemingly\u00a0lost their humanity in the labyrinthine nightmares of war.<\/p>\n

Words seem hardly\u00a0worthy to describe what Klay manages to capture in his stories, but know this: war as a faraway, faceless machine is an impossible fa\u00e7ade to maintain after reading Redeployment<\/em>. Dead dogs and people, lost sons and missing friends, eternal disconnects\u00a0and humanity\u00a0forever lost, the price of living after so much suffering\u00a0… for those\u00a0who can only\u00a0imagine what happens from\u00a0the relative safety of miles and screens\u00a0away, Klay demands we look\u00a0much, much<\/em> closer at\u00a0the\u00a0“no-shit war zone” where soldiers and trapped\u00a0civilians\u00a0live, fight, hide, die, so that\u00a0the majority of us will\u00a0never have to face such terrors ourselves. After\u00a0Redeployment<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 regardless of your personal politics\u00a0\u2013\u00a0denial\u00a0is no\u00a0longer\u00a0an option.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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