Phil Klay’s remarks about finding purpose in writing sent me back to some first principles. Why write? Why read? Aside from the utilitarian requirement to impart factual and useful information, what after all is the function of writing, and the use or reading, let us say of literature?

            To help me with this question, I did something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, which was to break out the folder I keep of clippings from the London Times Literary Supplement, or TLS. From time to time I try to cull from my ever-increasing pile of old TLS copies clippings of reviews and articles I favor because they were on a subject that interested me, or because they contained some especially good lines, or maybe because I might want to buy a book under review and the clipping would serve as a reminder, usually complete with price and publisher. Of course, it is sometimes an inconvenience if the book is not yet published in the US, but that obstacle can usually be overcome.      

            One review that I came across is of Simon Critchley’s Tragedy, The Greeks and Us (TLS March 22 2019). Critchley’s book makes the argument that “tragedy is the experience of moral ambiguity.” Reviewer Simon Goldhill writes “Tragedy was there first and continues to haunt philosophy’s claims to the high ground of disciplinary authority.” This is an interesting take on the ethical function of tragedy, one that goes back to the origins of both tragedy and philosophy. A similar claim might be made for the novel, which like tragedy may be said to address the “constitutive ambiguities of moral discourse.” Some novels also bear a formal resemblance to tragedy. In fact this might be said of Missionaries. Not only does the novel end with the stage in effect littered with corpses, but it may also be useful to consider Juan Pablo as a tragic figure. He survives, but he has lost an element of his humanity that we see in development and in decline.

            The July 9 2018 TLS reprinted part of a BBC radio lecture by Howard Jacobson titled “Why the novel matters.” Jacobson says that “it’s peculiar to the novel to empower readers …stirring in them intimations of creative energy. The better a novel is, the more we feel it’s been found among the ruins of the language we share.” In Jacobson’s view, the complexity of a great novel’s language and structure is what enables us to navigate the complexities of human motives and interactions. Reading novels can turn you into a novelist. Can it also, to paraphrase Jacobson, activate our best self? Jacobson links creativity energy and our ethical selves. Novels  can give us the ability to rise above social conditioning and prejudice to relate to others on a personal, human level. He uses the example of Tolstoy, whose private and creative self was freed to empathize with Anna Karenina in way that his public, evangelical self could not.

            Why write? In a review of some books on troubled teens and children in the TLS of July 21 2006, Terri Apter discusses the use of personal narrative as a tool to build emotional intelligence and resilience. Apter writes of the counselors reviewing the narratives of resilient and non-resilient teens –

            They came to realize that the significant questions to ask were: does a speaker stick to generalizations, or can she see nuance within a situation? Is a story flexible and inclusive, or closed and static? Does the speaker welcome opportunities for change or resist them? Are relationships tolerated, recruited, or rejected as threats? Can a speaker focus on emotionally taxing experiences or does she respond with vagueness, avoidance, confusion, or by changing the subject?        

In other words, the teens capable of telling stories that had some of the traits of good fiction also tended to be more resilient and better at learning lessons and moving on from their mistakes. The review mentions a related study on an aging rather than an adolescent population, drawing some of the same conclusions. The ability to tell good stories reflects and perhaps helps to develop the ability to manage the challenges of our own lives, and the ability to tell stories can be developed by reading them, the better ones especially.

            Not all novelists nor all avid readers are wonderful people, of course. Nor can a regimen of healthy diet and exercise ensure long life and good health, but writing, reading, vegetables and exercise all seem to help. I’ll end with two quotations recently found-

I know many books which have bored their readers

But none I know which has done real evil.  – Voltaire

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. – Jane Austin

              In my last post, I suggested that I would be taking sides in what I had described as the central debate in Missionaries over the use of force. Neither Phil Klay nor I can hope to settle this question, but I will say a few things about how this debate plays out in the novel, for the sake of argument and whatever insight I can add.

            As I said earlier, the principle proponent of force in Missionaries is the Colombian officer Juan Pablo. As Klay has pointed out, this is at least in part because he serves a country regularly rent by violence. Unlike the American soldiers, whose experience of combat is all abroad, he fights in his own country, striving to contain and stamp out the loci of greatest lawlessness and violence. His solution to these problems is generally to default to the military option. When the possibility arises that the police, rather than the army, will take the lead in suppressing banditry and violence, his is resistant to the idea, preferring military solutions that can make use of US firepower and surveillance technology. He may have a point. We might acknowledge that the military option may have its uses, as an arrow in the security quiver.

            What is troubling is Juan Pablo’s neglect of justice. He says at one point that justice is not the concern of soldiers. When another character introduces him to the expression, “No justice, no peace,” Juan Pablo is diverted, but his views are not changed. It is interesting that Klay dubs the contested peace operation “Agamemnon.” Agamemnon does not get very high marks as a warrior or a commander in the Iliad. Something else may be being suggested. Agamemnon and Juan Pablo are alike in both being primarily concerned with maintaining their own social status. War is an occasion for Agamemnon not only to recover a rebellious wife but to bring the turbulent lordlings into line. For Juan Pablo, his status as an officer is an extension of his bourgeois social position, important in part because the poor are prey in Colombia. The rich and privileged can afford security for their families and live in places not subject to the depredations of the outlaws.   

            Towards the end of the novel, Juan Pablo is working as a contractor in the Middle East, manning a computer screen that monitors the attacks on the terrorists. He watches an attack in which children are killed, and when an American colleague expresses regret at this, Juan Pablo privately attributes this to sentimentality. His rejection of any feeling of remorse is also troubling, and in the final, very short scene of the novel, Klay shows a boy who has survived the attack swearing  vengeance, “And then he was gone,” outside the reach of surveillance, presumably, to plot his revenge.

            Klay’s point seems to be that violence breeds violence, that we shall reap what we sow. He has made of Juan Pablo an intelligent and even sympathetic spokesman for the use of force in upholding order and defending what Juan Pablo refers to at the end as “civilization.” Readers of this blog might not be surprised that this made me think of my own book Soldiers and Civilization, the premise of which was that soldiers, and the military profession in particular, had often upheld civilizing institutions and practices. But Juan Pablo’s rejection of both justice and remorse, his attachment to the military solution even when others may be available, limit his claims to be called a professional, despite his bursts of thoughtfulness and his competence as a tactician. In effect he has failed to tie tactics and operations to an effective and defensible strategy. It was remarked upon in the book group that Juan Pablo is in some ways the most relatable character in the novel. We are often privy to his thoughts, we see his complex but caring relationships with his family, we follow his struggles as a young boy and junior officer find meaning in his life, but in the end he is found wanting, at least in Phil Klay’s eye. Juan Pablo’s commitment to armed force as a “force for good,” is called into serious question, although, intentionally or no, he is the character most likely to live on in the imagination. (Thanks JR)!

            Phil Klay announced at the end of our meeting that, perhaps signaling a trend of books inspired by family ties, he is at work on a book based on his grandparent’s service in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s when his grandfather was U.S. ambassador. If I got this right, the character inspired by his grandmother will be allowed to play a larger part in events than the conditions in the diplomatic service of the time allowed her. A debt to Tom Stoppard? Sounds interesting. Klay seems to be moving further from his Marine Corps roots although maybe nearer to his own background and upbringing.

Next: More Thoughts on Writing and Purpose              

            The other night, the veteran’s book club sponsored by the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum met with Phil Klay to discuss his new novel, Missionaries. I’ve posted twice before about the book, which I admire very much. In this posting I will report on the meeting with Klay. This was our first opportunity as a club to discuss a selected work with the author. It made for a very interesting evening. Let me say up front that my reporting is based on handwritten notes. I sometimes have filled in the gaps with my own imperfect memories, and sometimes I will add interpretation to pure reporting, I hope in a way that is clear and not intruding.  

            As a preliminary to my discussion of the Intrepid event, I’ll talk a bit about an interview with Phil Klay that was sponsored a few weeks ago by Hunter College. Some of this interview had to do with the craft of writing. Going by my notes, most of the discussion had to do with Klay’s reasons for writing this book. Actually, an interesting point he made both in this interview and at the Intrepid event was the mutual dependency of these two elements of writing (craft and motive, or message). Of course, some craft is needed to convey the sense or reason an author has in writing. This is why the career of a writer usually involves an intense apprenticeship. A writer may have to write a million words before developing the facility needed to tell the tale or express the thoughts and feelings that may be in her mind. For Klay, and for most if not all writers, I suspect, the reverse is also true. We find it hard to put the right words on paper until some progress has been made in finding the emotional or moral center of what we want to say.               

            Klay also said in the interview that by depicting U.S. involvement in military operations abroad, he was hoping to encourage a greater degree of knowledge and involvement concerning the American military. The military constitutes a lot of what we do as a country. The armed forces are to a degree separate and different from civil society. That is good and necessary, but communication between the two sides is necessary to provide civilian oversight and so that the armed forces can understand what the people expect of them. The President, as Commander-in-Chief, should go before Congress to explain U.S. military actions abroad: Who we are killing, and why.

            I’ll turn now to the book club event, which took place on 15 December. Aside from Klay and myself, participants included two representatives from the Intrepid, two Vietnam vets, Marine and Army, a Coast Guard veteran, a younger woman Army vet, and the wife of a retired special forces officer. All attending had a chance to ask Klay at least one question. We went the full two hours, and there could have been more.

            In response to participants’ questions, Klay talked in some detail about the 6-year process of writing the novel. He conducted numerous interviews, generally following no particular plan but going where various contacts and referrals would take him. He was aided in this by the fact that his wife is Colombian. Several of the events in the novel are drawn from real life. Klay sent out chapters for comment to friends. He developed a spread sheet for the scenes in the novel, the first half of which proceeds in a non-linear but (thanks to his painstaking approach) coherent narrative.      

As in the Hunter College interview, when talking about writing, Klay stressed the importance of finding the emotional center of the work you’re doing. He remarked that when he began writing fiction in college, his aim was to write a good story, but that later his focus became a desire to communicate something. (Sounds like Conrad’s “to make you see” doesn’t it?) This center develops over time, ideally becoming less shallow and more complex. Sometimes, Klay noted, characters in stories seem to have no other function that to represent viewpoints to be repudiated. They are caricatures, and their views are so badly put as to be easily refuted. In Missionaries, Klay presents the views of a variety of viewpoints. He may prefer some to others, but his intention was in effect to give the opposing viewpoints a fair hearing.

            Perhaps the central debate of the novel concerns the use and efficacy of force to establish and maintain order and justice. The Colombian officer Juan Pablo is most committed to this course. The opposing viewpoint is perhaps not represented by a single character so much as by the narrative itself, which depicts the unpredictable ripple effects of every act of violence, every bombing, raid, or assassination. The character of Juan Pablo reminds me a little of Rubashov in Darkness at Noon. Both characters are at the center of debates on the use of force. Rubashov comes to repudiate his own belief in the efficacy of force, while Juan Pablo does not. We are left, at the end, with a choice, both sides of which have their appeal and their warnings.

Coming Up: Taking Sides and Phil Klay’s Work in Progress        

Tonight is my Intrepid/Missionaries book club, and I will post about that later in the week. For now, here is a short piece that may appear in print sometime next year. Hope you like it.

            Since Plato made military service a prerequisite for the members of his Guardian, or ruling class, the western idea that there was something uniquely edifying, even ennobling, about military service has gone through periods of approval and disfavor, while never entirely disappearing. In our own time, most service members and veterans likely feel that we do have something to contribute to civil society, and the generally high status of the armed forces in America perhaps gives us the opportunity. In this short article, I will briefly answer the question of how we can put our military service to use in civil life, and what is it about military service that we who have served can impart to our fellow citizens who have not had the experience. Of course, the answers will be different for everyone, but I hope my reflections will resonate with service members and my fellow veterans.

Officers and other service members fulfill many roles and may sometimes acquire and practice a wide range of cognitive skills, often under pressure.  We train and organize. We think like tacticians and sometimes like creative artists and practical scientists. These capacities should not be forgotten or left at the door when we are off duty or reach our expiration of service. They are part of our DNA, and they may enable us to make valuable contributions outside the military sphere. The greatest benefit and contribution of military service to the larger society, however, may be ethical rather than purely cognitive. Perhaps above all there is the idea of service, of sacrificing comfort and even safety for a common, greater good. In the military, there is at least the language of ethics represented in some elements as the core values and out Constitutional oath.

Service members in effect belong to no party save their military branch. Social, religious, and racial differences can and often are subordinated to a common mission and set of values. In an American nation that today seems deeply divided, with divisions frankly not to be undone by election results or the dominance of either major party, the military member and veteran can set an example of inclusivity, of comradeship, even of friendship, with all Americans and all people. 

In a way that still strikes me as very strange but fortunate nevertheless, it took a war to convince me that that all men and women were brothers and sisters. I remember seeing the refugees on the road in flight from the fighting in Nasiriya, the parents herding their children out of the line of fire. Some of the Marines gave them water or food, despite orders not to do so. It was a kind of epiphany, one that I cannot fully relate in the intensity of the moment, but one that will always stay with me. This story, as Shakespeare has Henry V say, shall the good man tell his son. Finally, I believe it is the stories of our service, instructive and cautionary, of people at their best and worst, that we perhaps have most to teach and to share.

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