We've established that I'm a big slacker in earlier blog posts, so we don't need to go into that territory again. But, I'm soothing myself with the knowledge that it's winter at the moment, the dead season, so any creative endevour is bound to be fruitless.
That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.
Although I seem to have lost my baking mojo for the moment, I haven't lost my reading mojo. Oh no. The huge-ass Downtown City Mission Bookfair was last weekend, and I've only now surfaced from the giant pile of bargaintastic books that I bought. Okay, yes, there are a lot of Stephen King's books in there, but I also managed to score a few awesome classics - Alexandre Dumas'
Lady of the Camellias, which I'm really hoping is going to be better than ol' Gustauv Flaubert's
Lady Bovary. I know, I'm an uncultured swine, but damn that book was hard going. I mean, I'm totally down with having a hated character, but when you kind of think that all of them could do with a good boff in the chops, then it makes life harder for the reader than it needs to be. That's how Jane Austen's books make me feel too (well, I've only read two -
Pride and Prejudice and
Northanger Abbey, but that was enough).
So that was quite the digression. Here's what I actually wanted to recommend you -
Generation Kill by Evan Wright. Alright, so you might have seen the mini-series that they made out of it, but I have to say that the series, as awesome as it is, pales into insignificance in the wake of the book. Which is usually the case, but it's even more marked in this example, because Wright manages to convey much more of the sheer weight of his observations of the experiences of the Marines of First Recon than you get to experience through the series. Just the swing from out-and-out terror to over-the-top exhuberance in the space of like, ten minutes is enough to make your eyes water.
Now, a little caveat here, I don't usually (read as:
ever) go for war stuff. I call the History Channel the Hitler Channel, because all they ever seem to show is stuff on the military history of World War II. I'm not pro-war, and am barely neutral on military stuff in general. It's not that I don't value the discipline that the military (whatever branch, I ain't discriminating here) can teach, or understand the need that governments (and the people they govern) feel for protection against a real or imagined outside force. I can totally dig that. I'm anti-war for two big reasons - firstly, the attack of civilian targets brings it into the arena of killing people who mostly do not have a shit-show of killing you back, and that offends my sense of fair-play (old fashioned, ain't I? I know modern warfare, hell, warfare in general, doesn't work like that, but it's my blog, and this is just my opinion after all), and secondly the unholy expense of it. Honestly people, governments (and I'm sticking all governments in the same pot here, totalitarian to the most enlightened forms of democracy) schlep a lot of dough into not just supporting military units 'on the ground' in actual terms of food, medical and bullets, but also the research and development money that goes into new weaponry and defense systems. Hello? Anyone notice the unemployment rate? No? What about the children living in poverty in your country? Not that either, huh? You were too busy pouring money and men into a war that you thought you'd better start before the other guy did. I see.
Right, I'm off my high horse now.
Generation Kill hasn't changed my opinion of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or of war in general, but it has given me a teensy insight into the troops actually having to deal on a daily basis with trying to implement the frankly, mad schemes of the officers who planned that operation. It made me laugh, which I wasn't expecting to do, and it made me cry only a little (sad tears, not angry ones - another unexpected. Well, some angry ones). Evan Wright makes you see the men of First Recon (or at least, the part that he rode with during the first months of conflict) as actual people, not just a unit carrying out an objective, and for all that he seems to come to believe that their efforts will fail, he genuinely seems to admire the men that he travels with. He makes an interesting point which I'd like to share verbatim from the afterword because it's depressing as hell:
"It's the American public for whom the Iraq War is often no more real than a video game. Five years into this war, I am not always confident most Americans fully appreciate the caliber of the people fighting for them, the sacrifices they have made, and the sacrifices they continue to make. After the Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans. This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflict ends - and all indications are that there will be plenty of it - the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it. When it comes to apportioning shame my vote goes to the American people who sent them to war in a surge of emotion but quickly lost the will to either win it or end it." Generation Kill page 462
Now that I've cheered everybody up with that sentiment (which I happen to agree with), I think I'll get back to baking. At least if I'm going to feel sick, I like it to be from a sugar overdose. But in saying that,
Generation Kill is a really excellent book, it's told in a very lively style without a hint of pretension or moralising (in either direction, which is awesomely refreshing). But it's sad to think that Stephen King doesn't hold the lien on terror or horror - we create a good deal of the awful things in this world ourselves, and we make them for real.
