Phil Klay
Phil Klay
Phil Klayis an American writer and United States Marine officer who won the National Book Award for fiction in 2014 for his first book-length publication, a collection of short stories, Redeployment...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
affairs assisted hung public stay travelled variety wide worked
I was a public affairs officer. I worked with the media, but I didn't just stay at my desk. I assisted in military duties, travelled around Anbar province, hung out with a wide variety of Marines.
conversation less policy public serious served war
Less than 1 percent of American have served in 12 years of war, and serious public conversation about military policy is sorely lacking.
full novelist novels political strong
Political novels are full of pitfalls, particularly for a novelist with strong political leanings.
difficult join particular people policy sign understand
One of the things that's difficult for people to understand is when you join the military, you don't sign up as an endorsement of any particular policy of the moment.
bothers clear restricted underneath
With fiction, you can take something that bothers you, or that you don't have in clear focus, and you can put it under as much stress as you want. Really get underneath the skin. With nonfiction, you're restricted to what happened.
came course found people talked thinking
When I first came back from Iraq, I of course found myself thinking a lot about it. Not just my experiences, but those of people I talked to, friends, and colleagues.
lonely jobs communication
Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men and with God. The sense that I am alone, that none can hear me, none can understand, that no one answers my cries, it is a sickness over which, to borrow from Bernanos, “the vast tide of divine love, that sea of living, roaring flame which gave birth to all things, passes vainly.” Your job, it seems, would be to find a crack through which some sort of communication can be made, one soul to another.
issues tools fiction
Fiction offered me tools that allowed me to approach a wider variety of issues than the events of my own life would.
people asking moral
It's not so much the question that offends me; it's that the people asking it don't seem to respect the moral seriousness of the question.
behavior believe courage expose extremes great greatest home human integrity ordinary people sweep tests
I don't believe in any Greatest Generation. I believe in great events. They sweep ordinary people up, expose them to extremes of human behavior and unimaginable tests of integrity and courage, and then deposit them back on the home front.
lack necessary
Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't.
armor donald doubt puncture
I doubt there's anything you could say to Donald Rumsfeld that would puncture the armor of his narcissism.
intensely iraq war
I didn't want to write a 'this is how it is' Iraq book, because the Iraq War is an intensely complicated variety of things.
activity experience form human people priesthood separating varied war
Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other.