Friday, October 28, 2005
I just finished reading Colby Buzzell's new book, My War.
Buzzell was one of the most well known and widely read of the "MilBloggers" with boots on the ground in Iraq. His blog, My War, Killing Time in Iraq was a daily stop for masses of blog surfers, and the book fills in the gaps left by the posts on the now long-defunct blog.
One of the benefits of blogging so far has been the few times I've received review copies of books from publishers hoping I mention their books on my blog. Sometimes it's a book I really want to read, and sometimes...well sometimes... Anyway, we at Solomonia welcome them all, because we take pride of ownership in books. In fact, we need a bigger house, with a bigger office to hold more books. In fact, if anyone would like to send us a review copy of a bigger house, we would welcome it.
Fortunately, Buzzell's book is in the former category -- books I was not only happy to own, but happy to read. "CB" had a great blog, and he's written a great book. In fact the book contains a lot of his old blog entries with the gaps filled in describing how he joined the army, what was behind some of the posts, and what happened after the blog came down.
Buzzell joined up after kicking around from job to job and finding himself in his mid-twenties with no direction in sight. Although the entity known as "Army Recruiter" emerges as perhaps the most despised creature in the Buzzell demonology, there may be some projection occurring here as the story makes clear that CB went looking for the Army, not the other way around. Well, OK, he went looking for the Marines, but found the Army.
The book is a quick and enjoyable read, as anyone who read the blog would expect. A warning for the delicate: though Buzzell has an infantryman's heart, he has a sailor's mouth. The language is purely adult. It doesn't offend here, but be aware...
This is not a rah-rah patriotic flag-fest, nor is it a lame attempt at an anti-war prose anthem. It is what it is -- the point of view of a skater from California who listens to Social Distortion and joined the Army because it was a better job than any he'd had before -- except for a couple of occasions, like the first day of Basic and when the bullets start flying. At risk of sounding like a cliche, it's an irreverent look at everyday army life in the war zone. How's that for dust jacket material? Irreverent -- meaning with humor, not an unrelenting downer that the war's foes or those still looking to trip on the '60s Vietnam narrative might want, nor is it a goopy maudlin tribute to Mom, Dad and Apple Pie. It's what ya call 'nuanced' without being self-conscious about it.
The narratives of combat are exciting, but I found the descriptions of every day Army life to be the most interesting, and Buzzell shines there as much as he shines describing combat from the inside of an army Stryker vehicle. On a personal note, I found his description of starting to blog and write for the public to be about as perfect a description as I've read:
I didn't tell my wife, my parents, my siblings, my friends back home, my roommate, or anybody else in my platoon about it. The fewer people that knew about it the better, so that way I wouldn't get into any trouble in case the Army did have a problem with these blogs. And I'd also feel weird if people I knew read my personal writing.
To me, showing somebody else your writing is kinda like showing somebody a naked photo of yourself, and quite honestly, I didn't want anybody to laugh at me. With the Internet and the blog format, it looked like I could write whatever I wanted to, post it, and people I didn't know at all would be able to read what I wrote without me even knowing that they were, and I would remain totally invisible and nameless. If they liked it, cool, if not, whatever.
Yes! Exactly! If his descriptions of combat are anywhere close to conveying the reality of the situation like his descriptions of blogging, or of being a skate-jerk are -- fortunately two of the only things I can relate to from personal experience, thanks to guys like Colby Buzzell -- then they must be very good descriptions indeed.
As a side note, looking at the photo on the back cover, CB, despite his rugged description, appears a bit of a Poindexter, actually. (Joking! Joking! As you'll see if you flip open the book... That's just in case he reads this -- his head must be ready to explode from all the well-deserved good press he's been getting.)
In fact, though he may not yet know it himself, and that's good because if I want pretentious writing I'll read Vanity Fair, Buzzell is clearly an intellectual at heart, and a keen and sensitive observer and it shows.
In the end, My War shows that it isn't the flags, or the speeches, or the policy papers that motivate men. It's the guys standing on either side of him through the shared misery of training, the tedium of daily living and the flash-horror of combat. "Going through it together" is a lesson we could all take. My War cracks the door just barely enough so that we on the outside can have a peek and join them just for a moment.
Hell yeah.
