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
iraq left open proud successful whether
Certainly, when I'd left Iraq back in 2008, I'd been proud of my service, but whether we'd been successful or not was still an open question.
bad human incredibly
Bombs do very, very bad things to human bodies. It's incredibly shocking to see.
good great tolstoy writer
A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book.
boys family joined peace public service three tradition
There's a tradition of public service in my family. I'm one of three boys that joined the military. My father was in the Peace Corps.
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.
graham school writers
Certainly, my exposure in high school to writers like Flannery O'Connor, Shusaku Endo, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Graham Greene was formative.
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.
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.
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.
armor donald doubt puncture
I doubt there's anything you could say to Donald Rumsfeld that would puncture the armor of his narcissism.
lack necessary
Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't.
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.
deal treating war
Treating war as farce is one way soldiers deal with it.
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.