![]() ![]() Phil Klay: It seems like one of the challenges veterans have, when talking about the Iraq war, is of getting across the incredible complexities of a war that stretched across years. I sat down with him to discuss the novel, the various phases of the conflict in Iraq, and the modern American way of war. It’s fair to say many of us in the veteran writer community have been looking forward to his first novel for a long time, and Youngblood does not disappoint. In addition to writing fiction, he’s one of the smartest essayists and commentators on veteran’s issues, whether it’s on the members of my generation becoming ‘professional veterans,’ his meta-hot take on the hot takes on American Sniper, or what it’s like to compete in the world championship for the bar arcade game Big Buck Hunter (which, yes, counts as ‘veteran’s issues’). military, and later wrote the memoir Kaboom, a smart and funny and irreverent look at his 16-month deployment. He maintained a popular military blog while in Iraq, only to have it shut down by the U.S. Gallagher, an Army officer who served in Iraq, has long been a fixture on the veteran writing scene. A war novel wrapped around a murder mystery and wedded to a Bildungsroman, the book dramatizes in ways no one else has the conflicting strategies that characterized the American effort in Iraq. If you’d like to understand the modern American way of war, there aren’t many books that rise to the level of Matt Gallagher’s Youngblood (Atria Books, 2016). ![]()
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