This past Sunday I attended “Danger Close: America After 9/11,” an event hosted by Words After War, a New York City-based veterans writers collective I’ve had my eye on for some time. The event featured three authors of fiction who also served the government’s war apparatus in some capacity. Ex-Marine Phil Klay, the author of Redeployment, needs little introduction, but the other two authors brought not-so-obvious experiences and perspectives to bear on the discussion. Masha Hamilton is an author and journalist who also served as a civilian member of the Army command staff in Afghanistan specializing in public affairs and women’s advocacy. Her recent novel What Changes Everything features both American and Afghan characters whose lives have been ravaged by war. Maxwell Neely-Cohen is the author of Echo the Boom, a novel featuring young protagonists born “after the fall of the wall and before the fall of the towers.” Neely-Cohen could boast no military or in-theater experience, but he worked as a DOD-contracted intelligence analyst for a while after college, which is one of the more interesting perches within the military machinery I’ve come across lately. Moderating the panel was Words After War co-founder and executive director Brandon Willitts, a Navy vet of Afghanistan who has also spent a tour as an intelligence analyst working for the Joint Chief of Staffs.
The authors all had interesting things to say about how their lives took shape after 9/11, though each was slow to emphasize the overarching importance of the day in their individual biographies. For Klay, Hamilton, and Neely-Cohen, 9/11 co-exists with a slew of other determinants that took them towards war. Hesitant to make grandiose pronouncements, the panelists instead offered anecdotes and observations that commented obliquely on global politics and history.
Klay: “On the day we celebrated the killing of Osama Bin Laden, I learned that one of my former NCO’s war injuries would leave him permanently blinded.”
Hamilton: “I had a desire to have an impact and help make a difference. I knew I had to be cautious, but not so cautious that I didn’t follow my dreams.”
Neely-Cohen: “I grew up obsessed by the Cold War and the chance of nuclear catastrophe. It always seemed odd that we would risk or even sacrifice millions then, while after the fall of the Twin Towers we measured the cost of war in the low thousands. But even as they fell, I spent the day skateboarding with my friends.”
Often the remarks segued from cultural critique to literary process and technique:
Klay: “I always pay attention my most ‘urgent memories,’ but the stories you tell about yourself are always self-serving and simplistic…”
Hamilton: “Writing in third person (about created characters) allows you to judge them much more harshly…. fiction allows you to ‘write into the gray.’”
Neely-Cohen: “As I created my characters I depended on empathy and imagination…. I did not want to belittle them.”
And so the conversation went on a Sunday afternoon in a Brooklyn, New York performance space transformed into laboratory for ideas and argument. While Klay’s work explains how war felt to those who fought, Hamilton and Neely-Cohen register its reverberations beyond the battlefield and across cultures and generations. The subject was a little large for resolution in the time provided, but the panelists’ offerings were suggestive. Collectively and individually, we all went crazy as if plagued by hornets after 9/11, even as we had to make huge decisions with gigantic costs, and we’re not through yet. Thanks as always to our writers and artists, who observe these things best and on whom we depend to help us understand better.
Thanks also to Words After War for infusing the New York City vet writing community with a collective, sociable, and supportive vibe. Impresario Willetts is passionate about helping vets and obsessed by the idea that literature matters, and he shines at staging events that showcase veteran and war-related writing. Also on the Words After War board of directors is Matt Gallagher, the author of the memoir Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War. First published as blog postings from Iraq, where Gallagher served as an Army cavalry officer, Kaboom more than any other memoir I’ve read pays attention to the nuances of soldiers’ emotional lives, which bodes well for the fiction we are sure to see from Gallagher in the future. Gallagher’s writer and warrior cred nicely complement Willett’s vision and organizing ability, and so we look forward to what Words After War brings us next.
Phil Klay, Redeployment. Penguin, 2014.
Masha Hamilton, What Changes Everything. Unbridled Books, 2013.
Maxwell Neely-Cohen, Echo the Boom. Rare Bird Books, 2014.
Matt Gallagher, Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War. Da Capo Press, 2011.
Time Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature 
It’s always great to see fiction writers weighing in. With my husband in the intel community, I’m curious to read Neely-Cohen’s perspective.
As always, LTC Molin, I appreciate how you combine wit with serious subject matter to get your point across, as in “Collectively and individually, we all went crazy as if plagued by hornets after 9/11, even as we had to make huge decisions with gigantic costs, and we’re not through yet.”
Thanks, Andria. I think works like Neely-Cohen’s and Hamilton’s point to a new direction in war novels–those that reflect the war and its consequences, without depicting scenes of soldiers in combat or on deployment. That obviously stretches the boundary of a what a “war novel” is, but that’s OK. It will also be interesting to see what happens when veteran-authors start writing novels that aren’t about war and the military. What will they be like?
Pete, another wonderful post on your great blog. Please keep them coming. I’m jealous you are so close to NYC where a ton of key war lit events seem to take place. Thank you so much for contributing and sharing.
Thanks, Jesse–everything began with the great conference sponsored by the War, Literature, and the Arts journal at the United States Air Force Academy in 2010 that you helped organize with Donald Anderson. That was my first exposure to Siobhan Fallon, Matt Gallagher, Benjamin Busch, and a host of others, as well as a chance to reconnect with Brian Turner. Please tell us you’ll host another such event when you get back there in a year or two.