and a movie and a book
Oct. 17th, 2012 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadnes_stringI’m still spamming y’all, because I was boy-free last weekend, and that meant I went to the movies and actually finished a book.
I took myself to see Argo, which I enjoyed enormously and recommend to all.
You guys know Ben Affleck gives me the warm fuzzies, right? Not only because he’s a hometown boy (we went to the same HS) but also because it just makes me feel good when someone turns out to be smart and interesting instead of doofus tabloid fodder.
This movie is as good as The Town but more ambitious, with a huge cast in multiple locations and lots of confusing crowd scenes. The casting is fabulous (as it was in The Town—this seems to be one of BA's things)--not just John Goodman, Bryan Cranston and Alan Arkin, but (in smaller roles) people like Victor Garber and Titus Welliver.
It’s snappily written, with exchanges like this, delivered in the best borscht belt spirit:
Alan Arkin: History begins in comedy and ends in tragedy
John Goodman: It’s the other way around.
Arkin: Yeah? Who said that?
Goodman: Marx.
Arkin: Groucho said that?
But for all the pleasures of suspense and character, the movie is also deeply disturbing—a nostalgia movie in the most discomfiting sense. Affleck couldn’t have known about the recent events in Libya when he made the movie, but that doesn’t make the (historically accurate) scenes of the US Embassy in Tehran being stormed in 1979 any less horrifying. The Iranian hostage crisis is one of the first political events I remember being fully conscious of, and the deep malaise of it, followed by Reagan beating Carter through the streets with it (and all the subsequent revelations about that) probably formed my sense of the political scene. Stuff that’s hard to swallow down again, once unearthed (especially in today's political climate). *shudders*
I also finished Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds, a first novel (the author isn’t 30 yet) about the Iraq war that’s been getting a lot of press. Seriously, you’d think the book would collapse under its accolades: Tom Wolfe, Ann Patchett and Colm Toibin all blurb it across the front cover, and there's more on the back. It's a slim volume!
But the book pretty much holds up to its praise.
Powers also a poet, and it shows—the language is astonishing, both in its evocation of place (Tal Afar, where Powers served himself, and his hometown of Richmond, VA) and in its snappy dialogue. Powers also has a neat hand with symbol making—the soldiers’ “casualty feeder cards” start to assume a horrifying life of their own, and by the end of the book you understand why the protagonist spends so much energy describing the James River.
Interestingly, the book, intentionally or not, works against some of the conventions of war narratives. Conventionally, war stories are ensemble stories, drawing together unlikely groups of characters from different regions and classes and races to serve together as best they can. The good war writer is the writer who can give life to these disparate characters, no matter how briefly we meet them (I think The Naked and the Dead is usually given credit for solidifying this trope, but I might be wrong).
The Yellow Birds, in contrast, has only three or four fleshed out characters--only three named characters, in fact: the protagonist, his best buddy, their sergeant, and the buddy's mother. All are from the same region and socioeconomic group (working-class white in SE Appalachia) It’s a chamber drama, not an epic or an ensemble piece. All the other men in the protagonist's platoon are just “the private,” or “the LT” or “a kid.” It’s an interesting strategy, focusing your attention in a different way, on the solipsism and emotional deprivation of combat, instead of its fellowship and teamwork.
And, as that description probably makes clear, the book pretty much the anti-Generation Kill, refusing us the comforting celebration of competence and professional soldiering that book offers to ward off the futility of the Gulf Wars. The guys in The Yellow Birds have no ambition but minimal competence, and even that routinely fails them. They invade the same city over and over again, and the war, in the end, crushes them.
Judging from some of the hate the book has gotten on goodreads (in contrast to Patchett, et. al.), there is a strong contingent that thinks this is not the way to represent the war--the language I think, and the non-linear timeline, and the sense of defeat. I'm fascinated by this.
My one criticism of the book, which is structured as two narrative lines (one present, one past) leading you to the same horrifying revelation, is that it holds its punches back a little too long. The choice the protagonist has made, the one that’s left him emotionally crippled in the present, is a truly devastating one. But because you only learn what it is at the very end of the book, you don’t have much time to absorb its implications.
Still, a really amazing achievement, especially when you consider Powers came back from Iraq without a college degree, went through college on the GI Bill and then on to an MFA in poetry and then this novel, in about five years.
Besides, even the Iceman is talking about PTSD these days, so there you go.
I took myself to see Argo, which I enjoyed enormously and recommend to all.
You guys know Ben Affleck gives me the warm fuzzies, right? Not only because he’s a hometown boy (we went to the same HS) but also because it just makes me feel good when someone turns out to be smart and interesting instead of doofus tabloid fodder.
This movie is as good as The Town but more ambitious, with a huge cast in multiple locations and lots of confusing crowd scenes. The casting is fabulous (as it was in The Town—this seems to be one of BA's things)--not just John Goodman, Bryan Cranston and Alan Arkin, but (in smaller roles) people like Victor Garber and Titus Welliver.
It’s snappily written, with exchanges like this, delivered in the best borscht belt spirit:
Alan Arkin: History begins in comedy and ends in tragedy
John Goodman: It’s the other way around.
Arkin: Yeah? Who said that?
Goodman: Marx.
Arkin: Groucho said that?
But for all the pleasures of suspense and character, the movie is also deeply disturbing—a nostalgia movie in the most discomfiting sense. Affleck couldn’t have known about the recent events in Libya when he made the movie, but that doesn’t make the (historically accurate) scenes of the US Embassy in Tehran being stormed in 1979 any less horrifying. The Iranian hostage crisis is one of the first political events I remember being fully conscious of, and the deep malaise of it, followed by Reagan beating Carter through the streets with it (and all the subsequent revelations about that) probably formed my sense of the political scene. Stuff that’s hard to swallow down again, once unearthed (especially in today's political climate). *shudders*
I also finished Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds, a first novel (the author isn’t 30 yet) about the Iraq war that’s been getting a lot of press. Seriously, you’d think the book would collapse under its accolades: Tom Wolfe, Ann Patchett and Colm Toibin all blurb it across the front cover, and there's more on the back. It's a slim volume!
But the book pretty much holds up to its praise.
Powers also a poet, and it shows—the language is astonishing, both in its evocation of place (Tal Afar, where Powers served himself, and his hometown of Richmond, VA) and in its snappy dialogue. Powers also has a neat hand with symbol making—the soldiers’ “casualty feeder cards” start to assume a horrifying life of their own, and by the end of the book you understand why the protagonist spends so much energy describing the James River.
Interestingly, the book, intentionally or not, works against some of the conventions of war narratives. Conventionally, war stories are ensemble stories, drawing together unlikely groups of characters from different regions and classes and races to serve together as best they can. The good war writer is the writer who can give life to these disparate characters, no matter how briefly we meet them (I think The Naked and the Dead is usually given credit for solidifying this trope, but I might be wrong).
The Yellow Birds, in contrast, has only three or four fleshed out characters--only three named characters, in fact: the protagonist, his best buddy, their sergeant, and the buddy's mother. All are from the same region and socioeconomic group (working-class white in SE Appalachia) It’s a chamber drama, not an epic or an ensemble piece. All the other men in the protagonist's platoon are just “the private,” or “the LT” or “a kid.” It’s an interesting strategy, focusing your attention in a different way, on the solipsism and emotional deprivation of combat, instead of its fellowship and teamwork.
And, as that description probably makes clear, the book pretty much the anti-Generation Kill, refusing us the comforting celebration of competence and professional soldiering that book offers to ward off the futility of the Gulf Wars. The guys in The Yellow Birds have no ambition but minimal competence, and even that routinely fails them. They invade the same city over and over again, and the war, in the end, crushes them.
Judging from some of the hate the book has gotten on goodreads (in contrast to Patchett, et. al.), there is a strong contingent that thinks this is not the way to represent the war--the language I think, and the non-linear timeline, and the sense of defeat. I'm fascinated by this.
My one criticism of the book, which is structured as two narrative lines (one present, one past) leading you to the same horrifying revelation, is that it holds its punches back a little too long. The choice the protagonist has made, the one that’s left him emotionally crippled in the present, is a truly devastating one. But because you only learn what it is at the very end of the book, you don’t have much time to absorb its implications.
Still, a really amazing achievement, especially when you consider Powers came back from Iraq without a college degree, went through college on the GI Bill and then on to an MFA in poetry and then this novel, in about five years.
Besides, even the Iceman is talking about PTSD these days, so there you go.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-17 05:11 pm (UTC)I'm 18th in line for Yellow Birds...
there is a strong contingent that thinks this is not the way to represent the war
People like this puzzle me. KP was there. His representation of the war is as valid as anyone else's.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-17 05:57 pm (UTC)The emotional distance from them was helpful, in a way, though, because I was on the verge of being too upset to enjoy it (spiraling through arms for hostages, and other Reagan foreign policy issues and the shit we're still in today....& etc.).
I'll be interested to hear what you think of The Yellow Birds. I think you'll love the language--there were lots of passages I marked to keep--but then had to return it to the library.
KP was there. His representation of the war is as valid as anyone else's.
IKR? And he writes like Hemingway through much of it, who has street cred on these things. I'm going to go back and read through them more carefully, 'cause it interests me. I think it's partly b/c he goes after the competence thing so hard.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-17 06:04 pm (UTC)From John:
Where to start with this POS. It's war fast food for the elite literati that need their stereotypes reinforced.
This is NOT a novel. It's a long rambling poem with separate scenes. There are 5 characters in the whole thing. Seriously. Only 3 that matter. There is no character journey, barely any plot. Both of those things take a backwards seat to pretty, pretty words that may or may not connect and form a coherent sentence.
Pretty words about the desert, about the mountains, about a vase, about any object really. And yeah, literary writing needs pretty words. But the author's words, especially his analogies, are often off. Something that sounds nice at first, a pleasing image, good rhythm, but with critical thought, it doesn't make sense. Just one example, clouds are like soiled linens. Huh? This isn't a haiku.
The advance copy I got includes a letter from Little Brown's PR lady saying this is what it's really like to go to war. BS. It's NOTHING like this. This is tailor-made for a civilian crowd that doesn't know any better. The "conclusion" is unrealistic drivel that preys upon civilian ignorance and guilt and is lifted straight from the movie Hurt Locker. Hurt Locker was also garbage that preyed upon civilian ignorance, but at least it was original. This isn't new or even thought provoking. But the New Yorker crowd it's being marketed to won't know any better. They'll just know that war is bad and American soldiers are dumb and ignorant fools, like they already believe and need reinforced, because their kids would never join up. Maybe the author will have a pet-the-author day at their schools. It would probably move some units.
Another reviewer said it best, these are all "archetypes" from previous wars and previous war literature. Iraq was a different war with different factors and different characters. This is nothing but a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox. Whether you're looking for war literature or just literature, avoid this terrible, terrible book. Nothing but a big giant charade. If this is even close to the best literature to come out of Iraq, we're all doomed.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-17 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-17 09:38 pm (UTC)I still have a terrible knee-jerk reaction against Ben Affleck from his early days in Kevin Smith movies, though. But I'm glad you got to go to a movie that you liked!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-18 01:46 am (UTC)I realized I'd read 3 "home from Iraq/Afghanistan" novels published this year--it's getting to be a trend--all of them about combat-related PTSD, too.
Thank you! Young!Affleck is awfully hard to take, I agree. But The Town, which I saw mostly b/c it was about Boston, really changed my mind about him as an actor and especially as a director, and this one continued the good impression!
But, yes, it was nice to go to a grown-up movie! (I saw a preview for Cloud Atlas--which I will have to see, if only for Ben Whishaw)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-18 02:58 pm (UTC)O_o
no subject
Date: 2012-10-18 03:25 pm (UTC)It is a seriously fucking up book, I agree. And the end is the worst part--sorry! Really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. You can see what I mean about it's relationship to GK, or to GK-esque narrative, maybe?
Maybe I can get you to read Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk now--which is a similar story, but done as satire (and not written by a combat vet).