The Arts of War

In the spring of 2013 I will teach a class titled “The Arts of War.”  The course will focus on war literature from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the course theme will be the homecoming and aftermath.  Selections from Homer’s Odyssey will get the class started, as will Sophocles’ Philoctetes.  We’ll also look at Hemingway’s In Our Time, particularly “Soldier’s Home,” as well as some other poems, stories, and memoirs from the great tradition of war literature.  Turning to contemporary texts, we will read the following:

Brian Turner:  Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise.

Siobhan Fallon:  You Know When the Men Are Gone.

Benjamin Busch:  Dust to Dust.

Pat Fountain:  Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

Kevin Powers:  The Yellow Birds.

Toni Morrison: Home.

Time Now

“Time now,” in military radio-speak, refers to the present moment.  Most commonly the phrase is used in reports such as, “We’re returning to base, time now,” or, “Request artillery support, time now.”  I like its urgency, the way it doesn’t just name but intensifies the temporal dimension of the event to which it refers.  Kind of like the way art intensifies the life it represents, so as to make it both more understandable and more deeply felt.

This blog features art, film, and literature about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As I write this post, in June 2012, imaginative representations of the wars have begun to accrue complexity and depth.  Still, no site I know of devotes itself to cataloging and discussing these artworks–a great lack in my opinion, since in the final analysis our artists will explain best how the wars were experienced and how they are remembered.

Until January 2015 I was an active duty Army officer.  I served in infantry units at Fort Drum, New York; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and in Korea.  In 2008-2009, I was an advisor to Afghan National Army forces in Khowst and Paktya provinces in Afghanistan.  You can read about my experiences there in my blog 15-Month Adventure.

Me, at Afghanistan’s Royal Palace, Kabul, November 2008. Be sure to read the graffiti.
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