Book 1: Redeployment

Redeployment

Phil Klay

I figure that there are worse ways to kick off a year of reading than with the previous year's National Book Award winner. While Redeployment doesn't exactly make for light- or easy- reading, it is a rewarding and important book that gives voice to a conflict that many Americans struggle to accept, let alone understand. These stories of soldiers' experiences during and after coming home from the Iraq War (with one brief foray into Afghanistan) are appropriately unforgiving and challenging for their characters and readers alike, focusing as they do on unpopular wars that have largely left the country's collective consciousness. Phil Klay gives voice to a misunderstood- and underrepresented- group of veterans who are already largely forgotten despite (or, shamefully, perhaps because of) the currency of the conflict they represent, and does so without resorting to worn clichés about honor, valor, and duty. His characters ponder the shifting and often contradictory meanings of these and other concepts during a conflict that is defined as much by the blurred lines between civilians and combatants as by the shifting cast of extremist groups that constitute today's named enemies. With its uncertain open endings and ambiguous, unresolved moralities, Redeployment is unflinchingly and unapologetically suited to the war(s) it describes and, in doing so, seeks to understand.

Klay displays a variety of literary talents, presenting active combat, its effects, and the home front with equal amounts of care and plausibility. He often trusts his characters to tell their own stories, and though their voices and experiences can blur when their stories are read in quick succession, they offer important perspectives for events that have long been defined by ideologues and newscasters. Klay asks what it is like to be a soldier and finds a litany of answers, ranging from the reasons why one might consciously choose to reenlist for an active deployment to the rush of wartime adrenaline and the lingering self-doubt that accompanies a man (women are few and far between in these stories, often relegated to bare supporting roles) after he causes or witnesses death. Some of the stories are a bit unevenly paced, and many end without a sufficient sense of resolution, but such faults can be forgiven when the stories themselves are so raw and powerful. One of my few complaints is the lack of a glossary to allow civilians to make sense of the book's many acronyms, though they lend the stories an air of credibility and effectively drop the reader directly into the characters' world(s). The acronyms that comprise a good portion of the text of "OIF" disorient the uninitiated and remind us that, as skillfully as Klay (and others) can render the events and effects of Iraq, there is something fundamentally indescribable about them. And as disorienting as its endless stream of jargon is, the ending of "OIF" is one of the collection's most emotionally moving moments, a sadness that only such stark, matter-of-fact prose can truly convey.

Klay's range is impressive, and he refuses to reduce veterans' experiences to a narrow range of events and emotions; even when he explores the same types of experiences in multiple stories, he approaches them in different ways, effectively demonstrating the diversity of those who go to- and come back from- war. "Redeployment" and "In Vietnam They Had Whores" consider some of the less savory aspects of the return home, whereas "Psychological Operations" and "War Stories" directly confront the struggles that soldiers face when returning to a country that is, at best, as deeply torn about the merit of their contributions as it (still) is about whether the wars should have even begun in the first place. Klay neither condemns nor exonerates the American public- though his sympathies very obviously and appropriately lay with the veterans- and instead offers the kind of human perspective that fiction can provide, largely free of condescending platitudes. Ultimately, Klay focuses on the war's human costs, for all of the messiness and moral discomfort that focus necessarily invites.

The collection's strongest stories are, unsurprisingly, those that confront this cost- and the guilt that often accompanies it- head-on. "After Action Report", "Bodies", and "Frago" all consider what happens after the action calms down, and "Money As a Weapons System" is an unflinching, absolutely maddening critique of the bureaucratic bullshit that defines any large government-run operation. "OIF" is brusque, uncomfortable, and quick, but it leaves a stronger lasting impression than many of its more obviously ambiguous counterparts. "Prayer in the Furnace" tends toward the heavy-handed, but it does offer a glimpse into the mental gymnastics that are required of military chaplains in trying times. That leaves the collection's final- and best- story, "Ten Kliks South", which is a searing depiction of artillery action and its aftermath. This is Klay at his best, utilizing a kind of subtlety that elsewhere gives way to his desire to explain and force understanding. Here is war- any war, not just this one- in a nutshell, the narrator and reader slowly realizing what, exactly, it means to be involved, to take a life, to face the same fate oneself day in and day out. It's a slow burn that gradually becomes a story about much more than it seems, artillery-fueled adrenaline seamlessly giving way to sober reflection. As such, it embodies the best elements of Klay's writing and provides a fitting send-off. Redeployment has its fair share of action and emotion, and though its focus can seem somewhat limited and its stories a bit abbreviated and unevenly paced, it offers jarring and potent meditations on modern warfare that will help define the Iraq War's literary legacy for years to come.

Grade: A