Redeployment

I listened to this book on Audible and it was a real treat. The narrator, Craig Klein, does an excellent job conveying the depth of emotion in many of Klay's short stories. Klein easily deserves 5-stars for his work on producing this book.

Overall I enjoyed the short stories in Redeployment. My favorites were "Prayer in the Furnance" and "Money as a Weapons System." The latter is about a government "hearts and minds" project that involves trying to teach Iraqi children how to play baseball—a mission inspired by a car dealer in Kansas who had contacts with a member of the House—while more dire projects, such as providing clean water, are stonewalled.

The protagonists in the other stories seemed to blend together by the time I finished listening to the book. "OIF," a brief short story that is laced with military jargon seemed an unnecessary addition. Although I could understand most of the acronyms, I thought it was mostly included in the story to give a sense of how soldiers, by using military acronyms, can seem to speak in another language entirely. "They Had Whores in Vietnam" was a let-down, as well, because the story mostly focused on a Marine and his older buddy hitting a strip-club/sex spa in Jacksonville, NC and did not really stress the linkages between the wartime experiences of Vietnam (through the protagonist's dad) and Iraq/Afghanistan vets. "Psychological Operations," a story about a Coptic Christian Egyptian-American who served as a PsyOps operative in Iraq also fell flat for me. The story features the protagonists engaging in a debate with a recently converted Muslim student at Amherst, named Zara, about the ethical and moral dimensions of the war in Iraq. I felt that Zara was a contrived, straw man (or straw woman?) that seemed more fitting for Vietnam stories than the twenty-first century. At one point she accuses the Vet of "killing his own people" and asks him how he could have supported the war in Iraq. Anyhow, I found the whole scenario (Vet meets outraged, anti-war student in a classroom at Amherst then engages with her in deep, meaningful conversation over hooka at his apartment until she eventually comes around and tells him "It's alright, It's alright.") too optimistic? unrealistic? I don't know. Anyway, it didn't resonate with me.

Thinking about Zara brings me to a larger critique of Redeployment—there are no perspectives from a woman; at all. Women played a larger and more integral role in Iraq and Afghanistan than in any prior war in American history even if they were not combatants until recently. I could justify this omission if Klay had focused solely on infantrymen during the war, but he doesn't. He includes the perspectives of non-combatants and those in support positions. I also cannot accept the counter-argument that because Klay is a man he could not have written stories with a female protagonist that felt authentic. By virtue of writing fiction he is stepping outside himself in many of these stories. At least a couple of stories from the perspective female veterans could have only added to the variety and power of the perspectives and messages Klay conveys through these stories. Instead what we have to suffer through is the misogyny of nearly every character as women only come into the story as sex objects (strippers; whores; one-night stands; ex-girlfriends sending nude selfies) or as individuals who cannot fathom what men endured overseas (Zara; the self-centered and insensitive interviewer in "War Stories"). In the story "Unless it's a Sucking Chest Wound", told from the perspective of a former adjutant in the Marine Corps now attending NYU Law, we find that a brief relationship with a girl, who provided "good sex, but not much else," believes her personal history being abused as a child cannot compare with the pain the protagonist must have suffered in Iraq. The protagonist, of course, is fine with her continuing to believe that. I understand the importance of depicting the treatment of women by some of these veterans, as I'm sure it's unfortunately realistic in some cases. However, over the course of the book I found it became increasingly irritating as the women and veterans Klay depicts seemed to each fit a stereotype. Maybe that is part of the reason why I found many of the stories (although varied in location, time, and unit) homogeneous.

I still think Redeployment is good even if it is not comparable to the quality of writing and story construction in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. While I would definitely give a few of these stories 5/5, I cannot give the book as a whole more than 3/5.