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
compare experience open readers tendency using war
We have a tendency to think of war as this quasi-mystical thing, and that interpretation flattens the experience - by using different perspectives, I wanted to open a place for readers to compare and contrast, to make judgments, to engage.
fiction troubled
Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure.
civilian mean might terms using
We're so used to using military terminology in civilian speech that we forget those terms might mean something very specific.
apart breaking experience language marine poem terms thinking voices waste
When I was in Marine training I memorised 'The Waste Land,' which was a significant experience in terms of really breaking apart language and thinking about how the different voices in that poem function.
takes time understand war
War is complicated and intense, and it takes time and thoughts to understand what it was.
arena courage display experience impose millions narratives politics touch war
War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war.
event lives parts
We're told that when we remember, the same parts of our brain light up as when we experienced the event we're remembering. Your brain lives through it again.
Writing 'Redeployment' shook me in ways I never expected.
beginnings continue fear owed stories though
Though I continue to tell stories about Iraq, I sometimes fear this makes me a fraud. I feel guilty about the sorrow I feel because I know it is manufactured, and I feel guilty about the sorrow I do not feel because it is owed, it is the barest beginnings of what is owed to the fallen.
deal treating war
Treating war as farce is one way soldiers deal with it.
experience radically saw versions
I saw so many radically different versions of Iraq. It would have been difficult for me to come back and think, 'This is the Iraq experience.'
marine time
I never thought anyone would pity me because of my time in the Marine Corps.