Us marine deploying to the mediterranean. East africa in iraq, he grew up on military bases from the east coast of the United States to japan. He currently lives in new york city, but calls atlanta home. Please give a warm savannah. Welcome to jared alexander. Good morning. Wow, give me one sec here. Okay . First thanks for having me. I its been a hard year for facetoface interactions with books and her two years i suppose and just being here is a real honor. Actually, im was really happy to be invited and speak to you guys about my book and about some of the stuff that sort of influenced it. And thats kind of what i want to talk about actually is i i just when i thought about what i was going to come up here and talk about i kept thinking about other works and other works that sort of but maybe as a kid and as an adult sort of moved me into writing about war the way that i did and so i thought i took a little take a little time to do that. And i i guess first off i want to start by talking about kind of a book that maybe wouldnt be considered an inspiration for a war memoir, but it was hells angels by Hunter Thompson. Um the story of how his work kind of came to exist and the reason we all know about it is just about as important as the work itself, especially as it relates to understanding the kind of the fickle ways and means of a writers career and the trajectory of that and so by 1965 hundred worked as a as an itinerant journalist for the Dow Chemical Company as a Foreign Correspondent in south america. You know, hed hed written for laurent sporting sheets in puerto rico and as a beat reporter for a few local newspapers with middlings success. He had a novel which would eventually publish as the rum diary in the late 90s, but by 1965 living is living in San Francisco with a wife and young son his days as a writer looked really bleak. At the time i dont think he could get work as it on the docks, you know unloading shipping as they came through. You know anybody with sort of a 10 cent listen history though kind of understands the relationship between San Francisco and the 1960s. And for a short time the city eclipse new york is an american epicenter of cultural and artistic upheaval you know hunter by either fate or repetorial intuition found himself in a position to witness a sort of confluence of talent and social forces that would inevitably spread across the country think of Alan Ginsburg ken. Keezy, you know who hunter was friendly with and the swelling counterculture of hate ashbury. You know, the hells angels motorcycle gang was one of the darker forces sort of grabbing the zeitgeist in the San Francisco area in california large at the time. You know a hundred received an assignment from the nation to write about the angels in the march of that year, march of 65, and then eventually was published in may. An interviews years later hunter said, you know hells angels all of a sudden proved to me that holy jesus. Maybe i can do this. I knew i was a good journalist. I knew i was a good writer, but i felt like i got through the door just as it was closing. I think the trajectory of a writer especially one before they publish is probably the most interesting at least in me how they get to where they are how their life enrolled views eq through their pages. I think sometimes i think sometimes you can read the desperation in someones first work, especially if theyve been trying for decades to publish something, you know, something really a thirst necessarily or an eagerness eagerness to please some reader which is create sort of bad writing in and of itself, but but just kind of a general all or nothing vibe this sort of this is my one chance kind of energy, you know, im gonna sort of shoot my shot if you will. You get that with hells angels the feeling of now or never a sort of planting the flag and concrete. Its an owner an honest and open in very assured work, but its also very controlled. This isnt the hunter caricature. We come to find in the early 70s the sort of gonzo fear and loathing in las vegas do all drugs and delamate care sort of attitude. This is a very professional Hunter Thompson a very controlled controlled and a very mindful journalist. You know hells angels is hundred trying to prove his worth in an industry that a stunningly amoebic with his ability to shift it. Whim whats relevant or worthy of attention. Are going to be hunter, its our its hunters most honest work because he doesnt have the gods of character to hide behind or couchs points. He hasnt figured out how to do that yet. Now my first attempt to publish something about my time in the marine corps felt dead flat. It was a shelved it for nearly a decade after that. This is probably 2008 early 2009. I shopped around a rather terrible manuscript and was flatly refused and im very grateful for that in hindsight, you know, but i spent 10 years after that between the shelving of that work and then the first iterations of the next one and what i inevitably ended up selling which is what became volunteers. And a large portion of that time though. I spent that i kind of given up on the idea of writing about war as a memoir. I drifted toward fiction or just writing about the war in some other way. I felt i couldnt find a creative, you know in that i needed to write about the war in a way. Thats incredible or at least interesting. Well, the first manuscript failed because the writing simply wasnt good. I was also too close to the subject to see it clearly. Years later my life had changed and the distance between myself and the subject which is very, you know, powerful potent a distant some distancing grown between those two things. And ever so everything i attempted to write about it felt somewhat unmotivated and flat. Now ive read hells angels probably five or six times mainly when i was younger and more interested in the man than the than the subject or as a writer. You know when i was a you know, 19 20 years old has sort of atavism was attractive to me, especially as a marine when i was sort of bound by its, you know, rules and edicts which can be a little suffocating. You know later on though. I began to see the book in in the ways. Ive already described you know, the the the the tightness of the pros and this he put into it. But in the summer of 2015 i said down a real red hills angels all over again and found inevitably what we came away into my own subject in a way of writing about my own subject and what i hope is a unique way. And the first part of hells angels titled rolling boys. Its sort of a fast burn. Basically. Its a long lead paragraph that sort of sets up the stakes for the rest of the work. Its percussive and filled with like serious motion. Its its very energized. Theres a lot of its you can feel the motorcycles rolling down the interstate, you know, and you know waving their chains around and sort of causing a menace hunters both riding with them perhaps not as a member of officially but certainly in a loose spiritual sense observing their behaviors and attitudes and relationship with the world, but also his own relationship in the process. My time in the marine corps, though while i was a member of that organization was largely taken the same way and i was a participant but also an observer sort of watching the marines around me as they lived generally in fought and war specifically while the marine corps is not the hells angels, you know, i saw similarities between those two groups from its tribal loyalty to its politics, you know, never mind the direct connection between veterans and motorcycle clubs, you know connection hunters draws on in his own work. One of the early struggles. I have a writing about the world lives in the way what we tell war stories, you know, theyre somber both are by Artistic Design and do the weight of the subject. Theyre very heavy. They kind of press down on the reader. But that wasnt the experience i had in the marines at least not absolutely, you know war is kind of loud and visceral, you know, its mean almost as a fashion statement in our culture and and it reflects itself in the field under fire. You know, i can wax poetic about the dehumanization of the military and the dehumanization that can occur in war, you know, theres certain theres certainly enough that cliche and literature to go around it wasnt entirely true to my experience. I think we were sort of influenced by the cliches as much as we were a part of them and and marines wanted to go to war as much as hells angels wanted to blast their motorcycles down california interstates and quote showed the citizens some class. As hundred observed, you know, i found his opening a way into my own subject with the same verb and sat down to write would become the first scene in the rack book and ill read it here. Oscar mike, the marines are on the move. We are the devil dogs the leathernecks the shock troops and the hard chargers are born to kill members of the suck the green weenie the rod and gun club the hardcore our core the United States marine corps. We were modern era visigoths with a bigger budget and better armor. Vikings of the western world complete with healthcare and heavy artillery the marine corps is Like High School gym class with guns and we flash down the highway in western iraq like a full court, press rumbling with the menace of our v8 diesels in a long roaring column of dusty armor spiked with machine guns and automatic grenade launchers littered with radios hunting knives and cans of high Octane Energy drinks. Crosses dangle from our necks and the nylon bands that rep our helmets have been marked with our blood types a positive o positive ap positive and permanent black ink like sigils for the apothecaries snuff and cigarettes sit in our pockets like mana. We can run a hard line back to seattle and san diego the bronx and Upper Peninsula of michigan all the rotting hamlets in central, oklahoma, nebraska and the deep south. Weve earn geds and Public High School diplomas. Weve pulled prison time in underfed Community Colleges and worked off lazy academic hangovers and bloated party schools. We went to class and set board through canned lessons on the Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny. We waved the flag. We pledged our allegiance and so we are here. Maybe you love this once we are your friends your brothers and your sons. We are your fathers and your uncles we are your husbands the next lovers and cheap one night stands. We hate the marine corps the sometimes we love it too raw. That entire initial section, which was about a firefight that i was participant in the summer of september of 05 was nearly about 10,000 words and i said down and wrote it in a flash. It was really fast. I wrote in august of 2015 and then right after that i wrote down the 40,000 words and most of that is in the book now. And whatever issues i had about writing in the marine corps, you know that the sort of flatness of the pros and my sort of i guess exhaustion with the subject. Hunter helped me kind of unravel that and take a step back and look at it through a little bit more of an artistic lens and i was a huge help to me. And again it gave me a license to look at the military and the way that he looked at the hells angels and i saw a lot of similarities there and that sort of separation gave me a lot of it sort of two knocked a few chains off and i was able to really kind of put the words down and a felt and easier way. The next two books, im gonna talk about are kind of working together in a loose sense. And the first is good by darkness by William Manchester in the nexus. Next is the book called the return by hisham atar. Were all kind of connected to history. I think in in some way you both personally as it relates to our immediate environment and family, but also in a Larger National and Even International contexts. Events in our world kind of bounced tortoise like adams and the sound wave, you know, sometimes its imperceptible, but its always there in inevitable. When i sat down to write volunteers or even as i right now, i have to recognize and wrestle with this fact. Was my upbringing around the military and choice of the marine corps is my service and in iraq is my war inevitable did it and did history outside of my control have an impact on my and at what scale . The answer to these things are obvious to me, but its worth mentioning because i suspect theres a tendency to discount cold determinism in favor of the emotional safety of free will. But ultimately i felt this the history of our world as it relates to personal experience was important to contextualize the events of the ideas i had about my world and about my place in it William Manchester was a marine sergeant in the pacific during World War Two, you know, he went on to write a book about macarthur that i want to pulitzer some years ago. And go and goodbye darkness. He remembers his experiences in the war through a prism of memory and history as he travels from the South Pacific to okinawa as a civilian after the war so he goes back to all these old battlefields and basically recounts the history of the pacific war while also, you know taking you through the trajectory of his own life. Effectively, you know effectively following both the marine corps trajectory in the war. But also his own in sort of exploring the traumas that those things cost himself and the nation at large. You know bringing the larger history the war into the narrative allows him to widen the scope of his experiences into an examination of the era and how its moments were defined by those aspects. Regarding World War Two he wrote. To fight and World War Two you had to have been tempered and strengthened in the 1930s depression by struggle for survival. In 1940 two out of every five draftees have been rejected most of them victims of malnutrition. You had to know that your whole generation unlike the vietnam generation was in this together that no strings were being pulled for anybody. The four roosevelt brothers were in uniform and the sons of both henry Harry Hopkins fdrs closest advisor and leverage salt and stall one of the most powerful republicans in the senate served in the marine corps as enlisted men and were killed in action. But devotion overarched all the overarched all this it was a band woven of many strands. Now World War Two is kind of an overgrown subject in the commercial american lore, you know, its its notion sets up the behaviors and attitudes of the soldiers who came after it most americans who who go to war on the most americans go to war kind of on the stories the last one. Im certainly a an example of that, you know as hair mentioned, you know. You know, michael hare mentions who all get into in a little bit, you know soldiers from vietnam were inspired by the hollywood heroism of the Second World War. I was motivated into the military both the set by both the Second World War in vietnam. I dont think its possible to talk about experiences and more without placing it and some kind of dialogue with the war that preceded it. Each war certainly deserves to be examined in its own. But when i sit down to write anything on the subject, you know the wars that came before have to be included especially the warped waste history and ideology shaped those conflicts. You know, i think that our invasion of iraq is an example of that. It was sort of motivated by this, you know, a lot of the language in the talk. We heard similar verbs and nows a describe our war it was using the same way. We use those language that language and World War Two, you know axis of evil. I mean it was it was almost, you know pulled and sort of cheapened down and shoved into the narrative on iraq. It was almost. Uncanny the relationship between the two its ironic that the iraq war ended up more like vietnam, but thats another subject. And the next work was hisham putnam matars Pulitzer Prize winning work the return father sons in the land between history kind of applies its forces in him in ways. He cant avoid or tries he might you know hishams father a prominent critic of more gaddafis regime in libya was kidnapped and imprisoned by gaddafis goons and ultimately killed. In the book matar weave both his experiences in libya as a child and abroad is an exile and the history and end of qaddafis dictatorship along with matars own return to libya after the arab spring to search for his fathers remains. About his father. He states. My father is both dead and alive. I do not have a grammar form. He is in the past present and future even if i had held this hand and felt it slacken as he exiled his last breath. I would still i believe every time i refer to him paused a search for the right tense. I suspect many men have been buried have buried their fathers feel the same. I am no different. I live as we all live in the aftermath. I think about writing of my own Family History in this context, especially as i said out to write about both my dad and my stepdad and how they influenced me as a kid or how their mistake missteps also influenced me. While my relationship with my fathers in history doesnt have the way to matars on story. I could not help but feel a connection to a search as it relates to my own. Was i searching for my own fathers in these wars or in my service . Where does their history end in my own begin . My both my father and stepfather were in the air force. My stepfather was in the persian gulf war and my my father was in the cold war as a air Traffic Controller an area where fueler my mother and grandfathers were also in the military. You know matars work gave me the sort of inspiration to evaluate my role in the context of that history. Now the last two i these are these are really personal not works for me and theyre one as well known one is less or so, but they are connected together almost to the hip. In fact the two it would have the two authors crossed paths with each other in there as they were accumulating the material to write their respective works. The first one is dispatches by michael hare and the next one is the short timers that gustav hasford. Both of them are about vietnam. Michael hare was a correspondent and i wrote a fantastic book in the late 70s about his time there is of correspondent and about what the vietnam experience was like hazard was a marine combat correspondent, which is a job that i had. And he wrote about his experiences in the battle of way city and during marine boot camp. Now you know i have to talk about war literature. Its hard not to talk about a war story without the literature of war sort of ample, you know moving that ball a little bit. I was fascinated with the vietnam war as a teenager and until milder extent kind of still am. There are a few wars in American History that are eloquently and completely rendered in literature vietnam. And i happen to grow up right when much of that literature was publishing think of. Know tim obriens the things they carried and if i die on a combat zone larry heinemanns close quarters and pacos story a rumor of war, you know, james webbs fields of fire. These are all books that i saw coming up as a kid. Now much of that literature pushed me toward the military. Which by all metrics should be you know a bit odd and yet was incredibly common. War literature were much of it on the high art side is considered to be antiwar. Im thinking namely by works by authors. I just mentioned has motivated more people into enlisting in the military to fight and war rather than steer people away. I think i would argue people who have really engaged with that subject have become some what interested in war as a profession me and many of my friends enlisted in the military on the back largely on the back of antiwar stories that came from vietnam. The fact that this is truth. Those are massive wrenchant into the efficacy of antiwar art. The rows of ri the rows of arlington are somewhat paged with the paved with a bones of dead soldiers who saw full metal jacket and platoon and thought i want that for myself. As ive gone back to reread some of the works in vietnam and write my own story with that out with that is an outgrowth of that war. You know, the the works that grabbed me the most were the ones that not at this inevitability this sort of understanding that the sort of motivations in his geography and the sort of ideas of masculinity that exists in the previous version that are rendered in those stories end up propelling people into the military later. And theres a certain Destructive Force that comes with that and the works that a knowledge that are really interesting to me because and theyre very rare. And both dispatches and the short timers do that. I put these books together and not just because they inspired me but also they worked together to create a pair of films which are both considered classics apocalypse now and full metal jacket. The short timers is was adapted into full metal jacket. And lots of the dialogue for apocalypse now comes from Michael Harris dispatches, and there is actually some of Michael Harris dispatches in full metal jacket. Um, michael here remote. Lets see much of those much of that dialogue but going deeper each of the work operated in orbit of the fascinations the fascination the authors had with war. Either directly or indirectly the relatively unknown in the mid60s herod asked esquire editor harold hayes to report on vietnam for the magazine. When asked an npr interview in 1990 why he went to vietnam he stated. Well, this is tough to break down, but it has to do with a certain are kind of ritual American Passage courage testing yourself going to see it going to someplace really terrible and looking at it looking into it. Most folks in and around war kind of know this is an old motivation but a very honest one. But as hair said one that here but also one that is also hard to describe. It has to be almost rendered in abstract explained through example and suggestion and even metaphor. Its not enough to say some folks want to go to war and see if they can hold up just a bit too wrote of a statement. Its too borish. Its kind of thing one might read in a hacky rewrite of hemingway novel here in a bad war movie. Because the ramifications of that desire outweighs the motivation. Good war stories exam and that desire through destruction of that desire asking what it is what it is about war that makes it so appealing then letting war destroy it or consume the individual. Hair does this in Great Lengths and dispatches both from the examination of americas involvement in vietnam. But also how the desire affected those around himself. Gustav hasford does the same thing in the short timers the character joker fully embodies the american tradition tradition of seeing war for the sake of itself the dehumanizing aspects of that decision within the institutional marine corps, and its culminating effects in the battles of way city in your case on two battles here also experienced. Both hassford and hare pushed their narratives to examine the extreme in certain contexts though. Its certainly true though. This is certainly true with hazford who has characters behaving reprehensible to even the marines around them one character. In fact actually eats a blown piece of flesh from a dead enemy all for the sake of demonstrating toughness to his pals. While flirting with the absurd the general attitudes present in the short time was recognizable to me as a marine decades after that book was published. The performance of toughness the represent the presentation of over or hypermasculinity those things still play out in the military circles to this day, which is in part an overexaggeration of an over exaggerated aspect of american culture. The hazard was kind of an eccentric writer. He sort of teetered in the old character of Hunter Thompson and charles bukowski. He was an incredible auto diet act. He taught himself how to write through what is arguably a more romantic though, certainly a much harder way. After leaving the marines in the summer of 68 the poor southerner in high school dropped out moved to the Pacific Northwest and crawled his way up the craft ladder through a sort of obsession with the books which ultimately led to his downfall. And dog and then followed by a dog determination. That would have likely buried your average creative writing graduate student into a mob of a pr job or a marketing job. After a decade of odd jobs in a blizzard of numbing workshops. He finally managed to sell shorty his nickname for the short timers to bantam. It took hair seven years after returning to vietnam to write to put dispatches together namely because the subject was so haunting and traumatizing that by the end of it. And especially after it was released. He wanted nothing to do with it. During the writing process hair effectively locked himself inside his apartment and forced himself to navigate his own struggles with the war and his relationship with it in many ways internally and externally justifying orwells belief that one of the features of being a writer is an ability to face unpleasant facts and still function. Both writers wholesale demonstrated the necessity of effort both internally as hair exerted and against internal and external forces such as class and education. Its hashford experiences shows. They ensure they worked clumsily and painfully toward conclusions and ideas and even dreams they saw clearly. They both served and arguably still served for me examples and Cautionary Tales of the gutwrenching worker writer has to do to not only be able to produce literary our honestly. But also exist in the industry as a professional about when to exert patients and when to leverage your agency. And how to do that these are things im still learning but i think of these two often as i navigate this job. In terms of their work, there is a supposedral nature toward that is often lost as a human attribute. Replaced by the tragedy it sort of befalls its victims. But some of the best war stories at least in my opinion or those are complicate the characters with the ideas of seeking war in combat as some personal means to an end. Both dispatches in short timers. Well, you know many of the characters wanted to go into combat or as raptor man puts it get some trigger time. As joker and the rest of going to way city, which is embroiled into an ugly urban battle at the start of the 6810 defensive. They made a squad leader named crazy earl. Who states to his man while seated next to a corpse of the north vietnamese soldier . These are great days. Were living bros where jolly green giants walk the earth with guns. The people we wasted here today are the finest individuals. We will ever know when we rotate back to the world. Were going to miss not having anybody around thats were shooting. Theres a performative nature toward that has existed as far back as homer. But that attitude has been fueled in a larger sense by our own representations of soldiers and war. Its selfreplicating. Or just heating or just heroism in general terms dispatches says this i keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by 17 years of war movies before coming to vietnam to get wiped out for good. You dont know what a media freak is until youve seen the way a few of these grunts would run around during a fight during a fight when they knew that there was a Television Crew nearby. They were actually making war movies in their heads doing little guts and glory leatherneck tap dances under fire getting their pimple shot off for the networks. They were insane, but the war hadnt done that to them most combat troops stopped thinking of the war as an adventure after their first few firefights. But there were always the ones that couldnt let that go. These few who are up up there doing numbers for the cameras. Wed all seen too many movies stay too long in Television City years of media glut that had certain connections difficult. The connection between pop culture and war is very real one one tends to influence the other, you know, a great modern example of that is the ar15 rifle and its variants, you know, us soldiers carried its military equivalent overseas in wars that were painted in ways that were almost neurotically patriotic. That weapon then proliferated in our country is a totem of that fantasy something tangible a person could hold that connected to them with the image of the warrior. Which in turn create an organic recruiting tool to push people motivated enough into a place where that fantasy can presumably become real. Its a cycle of war and service to itself. I saw similar themes play out in my own life as a kid around the military and again as a us marine. A need to fill a role often defined by forces ignorant to the fantasies. Theyre creating. This is what i wrote about it. I began to run like i thought a soldier should. The woods were dark from vines and thick cannaby leaves. And for a moment, maybe i was in action in an action movie. Maybe i ran like elias simple tune or arnold and predator. Maybe i ran through the ashaw valley like friends and Hamburger Hill or through the streets of way like joker and full metal jacket. Maybe i was a character in a paperback war novel. Filled with scenes of tough vocabulary fodder for the boyhood imagination of american war or perhaps i was charged or perhaps i charged through the battles. I would learn about later when i was older and closer to the goal. I could feel just out of reach. Maybe i sprinted from the normandy coast to the rhine marching with the gi sort of the final righteous destruction the nazi death machine. Pure epic fantasy of the american soldier. What if i ran across bizarre Little Islands my life would be soaked with it marine boot camp a few years later islands was strange names like guadalacanal saipan pelelu and iwo, jima. All aiming at the end of the japanese empire passing beneath my feet and buried in the fallout of the new nuclear era. But maybe im only insane in this moment running down a trail and an outpost of americas own empire dressed in camouflage. Another kid playing war do you have any questions . The fascinating thanks. I sat here 10 years ago right here and listen to carbon landes review matterhorn. Why . And he was a marine oxford guy. Why are some People Choose nonfiction and im a nonfiction guy and some People Choose fiction and did that influence you at all . Now thats a good question. I i think that like i actually tend to lean toward fiction now. I i actually kind of going in that direction. Its very strange. Its good question. Actually. I dont know. I think that they both have different the requirements to nonfiction are a little more rigid in the sense that you know, especially if youre writing a piece of journalism or just even a memoir i wanted when i when i wrote mine, for example, i spent a lot of time researching and and trying to make sure that what i was running was is accurate as possible. I didnt want to make a misstep there, but memoir is also based on memory, you know, its and so i was allowed to it gives me some gives a the writer some agency. But i dont know. I think that you can be more creative in in fiction in ways because one you get to shape. The nature and the ark of the story itself. Whereas a nonfiction you can do that to an extent, but youre really bound by the facts of the subject youre talking about you can make composites of characters in certain respects, but you really locked into that. And i found like you know and works at motivate me on the nonfiction side. Is that sometimes the narrative arc of it somewhat falls a little bit flat and thats just simply because the story doesnt lend for a nice nice. Neatly defined piece. One of the a really good nonfiction work that i i just listened to that does a very good job because the story lends itself to it was alpha which is about the the ella gallagher. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, Eddie Gallagher and his his nonsense and in the trial that came after was fantastic book. And really moved by that i i think that guy should be let in. Thats okay though. But yeah, i am but i think that i think that fiction really does give you some some extra tools to play with that can. Shape that that that the world differently and especially if you have a political point or perhaps a social one to make out that answers bear with me as im trying to put this question together. I love tim obrien and his notion of the story truth, and im kind of piggybacking off of this idea. When youre playing with fiction and nonfiction youre talking about the rigidness of nonfiction. Im an english teacher and i talk to my students about memoirs and about the the burden of truth and telling the truth when you tell a story and then verses timo brians notion of the story truth. Which is i feel that im getting at something more real and my ability to tell a story and an ability to create fiction. So im trying to search for a question in here just as im teaching like you sort of bring this up in terms of how how valuable is the truth and and i guess in compared to tim obrien the story truth. Do you find that thats sort of and telling true war stories . As tim obrien does yes. Wow. Yeah, its been a minutes. Ive read that section, but i remember very well, you know, i remember pretty well and and there is a sort of one of the things about war stories in particular. I think he discusses is that its its all very trajectory based. Its its like you have an one thing they teach a nonfiction is like you tend to look at a subject to a number of different lenses either. You know, lets say youre doing an investigative work. You have an economic ones. Youll look through it. You look to a policy lens and more stories are somewhere but theyre its its personal. Its i was we were in an event and now there are and theres a squad of seven guys. Well now there are seven different interpretations of that event and the aggregate of that creates probably the most accurate one, but its also the most money. You know it sort of strange how works. And so i think hes was kind of getting at that a little bit. I think that if like you mentioned your teacher. I think that what i i would love to do is put those works in dialogue with each other take what tim obrien says as sort of a as a control and then run it up against another war story. Thats maybe not living in that same vein and sort of contrast those two together and see if or even it not even necessary war stories. I wonder if that doesnt apply to elsewhere other, you know, it could apply to a lot of Different Things narrative truth is a thing and and i think that putting those things in dialogue would be would be an interesting exploration. We talk about like james james. I think its fray or fry eventually but his million little pieces and we talk about, you know, kind of he was kind of getting at the story truth, but he was you know lambasted for. Right and so like but but you have known as to your reader as well. And so yeah, i dont yeah, so i i like that too. So so we talked but we talk about like kind of that pull to tell what is sort of your your felt reality versus the actual reality perhaps my biggest fear was having somebody who was in the events that i wrote about and come back and say that it was wrong. Now i could. And i i theres a defense against that you know, and i even wrote it in the in the very front of it. Is that memories fickle and unkind, you know, very cruel and but thats something i really struggled with was like i needed to make sure that and also like i think you have to when youre writing a member a particular the the nervousness i think is at least for me the nervousness was very much. I didnt want to seem bigger than i was i didnt want my i didnt want any ego getting in there and inflating inflating a story that was the idea was a was one of the driving principles when i sat down to do ex. I was terrified of like being perceived as a somebody whos chasing some sort of dubious glory because that was inherently my experience. But there is some there is a lot of that any million little piece. I think you have frey got he got kind of killed effectively his career wise. I think he wanted to write fiction or something or nothing at all. There is a line between compositing. A scene which can be done and and just whole holy manufacturing one. And that was where i think he and im a little hazy on the details of what happened. I think thats what he what he did . Is he whole cloth . And scenes and and i remember when i when i learned that you could composite you can compile even that was like a little bit. I was a little bit tense about that. I was like so we can yeah, ethically combine scenes into one scene and that was real a little bit stunning to me and im still wary of doing that. I would do that in fiction, but i dont know if i would do that and and nonfiction i think that be just disingenuous. Well, thank yeah. Dont be shy come on. When you were deciding on what memories to talk about, did you go from the approach of you . They thought this was the most interesting or on a central theme . For you know, thats interesting. I i actually came at it backwards. I started with the war itself and i thought that that was the most interesting because it might my initial thought was and i think the most veterans probably have this. Is that the war so extreme that thats the story and it wasnt until i showed it to folks who have no connection to it a lot of pieces. Id written about a lot of subjects a lot about growing up around the military and then fighting it and they like to the childhood stuff better. And thats it started to orbit around that like lets look at this to a kids eyes and then i sort of adopt that as the as the attitude so but in terms of like selection, yeah, i there was a it needed to be in service to a few like a few keywords effectively, you know i was looking at war obviously military service in general terms. There was a little bit of a masculinity in there sort of as a third loose thread. But then i mean from a strictly craft level i was looking for emotional stories not only ones that i felt had a lot of emotional residents, but also that were universally accept accessible like so and also that means being specific right like it was Little Things like you know High School Relationships that i can make a connection between my experience is going into the military and that like things that we can all sort of relate to one of the struggles about writing about war and military service in general terms. Is that so few people have done it that that were talking about life on mars at a certain point and and so i had to go out and find things that connected somebody who had no knowledge of that. And plug that in there and make it matter make it relevant and i hope i did. Thank you. Probably every 10 fiction books. I read a nonfiction what i found when i read the nonfiction it brings me back. To the real world and what i mean by with your story of your marine life and more it brings people back to what reality is and i was wondering when you decide to write do you look at it as history youre writing history. So people can read history the way it really was. I dont know that i dont know that i looked at it in terms of like as a form of just narrative documenting like a historian might or just running a history of my own experiences. For the purposes of just retaining it on that front. I but i do think that i wanted to show an angle of war that was probably missed. Maybe an understanding of it. I struggle a little bit with the heroism the sort of over the over sort of over amplification of heroism, you know, thats why Eddie Gallagher is the way he is right Eddie Gallagher if you if you the to those who dont know at the gallagher was a navy seal who who committed war crimes in iraq and in 2018 and is phil seals brought it per trial on him it took some doing and the course of the narrative you begin to realize Eddie Gallaghers trying to live into a war movie that that hes created in his mind. And that was something that i saw myself and i saw another people and so that was what i was really so it was almost thematic. I really wanted to focus on a theme. And and and get the theme and plug that in as something that was real for very for a lot of people that was sort of what i what i was hoping to do there. Because i very no got one more. Weve got time for you. I dont know. I dont know if i heard it or not. But how long did you serve in iraq . Did you bring anything up about ptsd . Did you bring anything up about the 22 program . Okay. Okay. I was in marines from for eight years. I spent i was in 98 to oh six. My last deployment was to was in the iraq war. I spent seven months there and the syrian border. Little set of towels here who saved i think are controlled by isis really had been at one point, but i i didnt i talked a little bit about the formation of ptsd and how that can happen. But the book effectively ends with me leaving the marine corps, and so a lot of the a lot of the literature and so on that subject. Would need to go we need to be plugged in somewhere else a good book on that subject actually is as a guy named david morris sort of book called the evil hours and its a biography of ptsd and he looks at ptsd both in himself as a marine veteran as a work correspondent, but as in larger clinical subject. He kind of goes through the sort of evolution of our understanding of its fantastic book. I highly recommend it. In america. Chin, julie wong is with us today courtesy of jerry and narita thorne and joyce and ed conant. Chin, julie wong is a graduate of Yale Law School in Swarthmore College formerly a commercial litigator. She is now managing partner of gottlieb and wing wong llp a firm dedicated to advocating for education and civil rights her writing has appeared in major publications such as the New York Times and the washington post. She lives in brooklyn with her husband and their two rescued dogs salty and peppers. Please give a warm savannah. Welcome to chin julie wong
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