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
apart breaking experience language marine poem terms thinking voices waste
When I was in Marine training I memorised 'The Waste Land,' which was a significant experience in terms of really breaking apart language and thinking about how the different voices in that poem function.
civilian mean might terms using
We're so used to using military terminology in civilian speech that we forget those terms might mean something very specific.
fiction troubled
Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure.
complexity experience favor narratives nuances pity reducing
Pity sidesteps complexity in favor of narratives that we're comfortable with, reducing the nuances of a person's experience to a sound bite.
perceived
Pity addresses the perceived suffering, not the whole individual.
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.
genuinely interested perspective
It's often difficult to get perspective on your own stories, on your own experiences, without talking them through with someone who is genuinely interested in thinking about them. And that's the key.
served war
I'm not anti-war. I served in a war, and I served proudly. But just or not, necessary or not, war is the industrial-scale slaughter of other humans.