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
archetypes minds navy notions people popular seal spectrum wide
There's a wide spectrum between a Navy SEAL hero-killer and a traumatized victim, but those are the archetypes - hashed and rehashed in the media, in popular culture, in the minds of people with a lot of preconceived notions but not much else.
exposure
At least for me, writing a book is continual exposure to blind spots. There were things I wanted to be true and wanted to believe, but it always got more complicated in the fiction.
assume bad civilians embark iraq nation ownership wars
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen's wars as they are the veterans' wars. If we don't assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we're in a very bad situation.
certain war
You come back from war, and you have a certain authority to talk about war.
civilian gone outside painful protect respect sacred veteran wants
The civilian wants to respect what the veteran has gone through. The veteran wants to protect memories that are painful and sacred to him from outside judgment.
argument cold larger peace peacetime provided since war
The Cold War provided justification for a larger peacetime military, since we were never really at peace, or so the argument went.
casualties civilian coverage outlets
The First Battle of Fallujah was called off in part because of the intensity of non-U.S. media coverage of civilian casualties from outlets like Al Jazeera.
empathetic fairly iraq learn mean pull relationship returned serious time willing
The Iraq I returned from was, in my mind, a fairly simple place. By which I mean it had little relationship to reality. It's only with time and the help of smart, empathetic friends willing to pull through many serious conversations that I've been able to learn more about what I witnessed.
art different-experiences veteran
Veteran art creates a meeting place between veterans and civilians, or simply between veterans with different experiences.
country military mean
Our country regularly uses military force, but only a fraction of Americans serve in the military. This means fewer and fewer people have a direct link to the military, and yet it remains as important as ever that we have a rich understanding of what we are doing as a country.
believe character mean
Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters.
war strange
War is too strange to be processed alone,
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.
girl war distance
There are two ways to tell the story. Funny or sad. Guys like it funny, with lots of gore and a grin on your face when you get to the end. Girls like it sad, with a thousand-yard stare out to the distance as you gaze upon the horrors of war they can't quite see. Either way, it's the same story.