thedrifter
08-04-07, 01:35 AM
August 4, 2007
Books of the Times
Our Man in Iraq, Embedded Unhappily
By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
LAST ONE IN
By Nicholas Kulish
261 pages. Ecco/Harper Perennial. $13.95.
An appendix to Nicholas Kulish’s debut novel about a gossip columnist who finds himself embedded with the marines at the outset of the Iraq invasion notes that among the author’s favorite books are Evelyn’s Waugh’s “Scoop” and “Sword of Honour” trilogy, Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” and Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” Normally, this might be leading with one’s chin. But Mr. Kulish, the Berlin bureau chief for The New York Times, was actually embedded with the marines in 2003 while working for The Wall Street Journal, and he has brought home a story worthy of his literary idols. This is a very good book: funny, harrowing and sympathetic.
The novel’s protagonist, Jimmy Stephens, is a somewhat pointless person, a nightcrawler for The Daily Herald of the Manhattan demimonde. He lands himself in scalding water after he mistakes a pair of expensive cowboy boots that he spots in a suspiciously noisy stall in the men’s room of Nobu as belonging to a famous movie actor. It turns out that the boots did not belong to the actor. At the time, he was halfway around the world on location, and not, as Jimmy has written in his column, having extramarital sex in the men’s room of that tony TriBeCa eatery.
Note, by the way, the embedded homage to Evelyn Waugh. Remember the name of the chap in “Scoop” who is mistakenly sent off to cover the war in Ishmaelia? The one who writes a nature column for The Daily Beast called “Lush Places” (“Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole”)? John Boot.
Jimmy has two choices: get the boot (sorry) and pay for his legal expenses in the lawsuit filed by the enraged actor, or become a last-minute imposter/replacement for The Daily Herald’s war correspondent, James Stephens. Stephens, a veteran of every war zone on the planet, has just been run over by a delivery truck on the meaner streets of Manhattan. At this late stage in the game, the Pentagon will not accept substitute correspondents. Faced with this nightmarish Hobson’s choice, Jimmy collects his gas mask and boards his flight to Kuwait, where the fun, and horror, await.
Mr. Kulish has (no surprise) a reporter’s ear for dialogue and detail, and a novelist’s skill at constructing a cracking good story. He tells it briskly and with genuine wit. The pages fly by faster than a Predator drone.
We meet cynical, hard-bitten war correspondents (real ones, that is) and human, coarse and engaging young marines, as well as their faintly sinister, tightly wound executive officer, Lieutenant Katzenbach. If I have a quibble, it would be that some of the soldiers seem rather reminiscent of some of the characters in “Catch-22,” but this is a minor criticism and perhaps invalid. Types are types: they exist from war to war. If only Milo Minderbinder had had access to eBay!
The best moments in the book, indeed, have a Yossarian feel to them, echoing the justifiable cowardice of the hero of Heller’s masterpiece. In one LOL-funny scene, Jimmy’s unit comes under Iraqi artillery fire. (That’s not the laugh-out-loud part.) Cowering in his foxhole, he tries to call the New York office on a satellite phone, but in the confusion dials CNN. His Daily Herald boss, eating breakfast granola, suddenly hears his reporter’s voice screaming at the CNN anchor, as the call is broadcast live to the entire world:
“Get me out of here! Get me out of here! Oh, my God, I’m going to die. You have to get me out of here.” It goes on and gets rather graphic as Jimmy, under the impression that he’s speaking to someone at The Herald, pleads to be unembedded.
Normally, this would be a career-ending moment, but thanks to the intervention of his new comrades, the marines, who have come to adopt him, Jimmy gets his redemption. By the end, he’s a very different lad from the one who used to devote his professional energies to writing about who’s doing what to Lindsay Lohan.
His prior career actually allows him to bond with his new macho companions. One night, after he has revealed his secret to them in the heavily mined vastness of the Iraqi desert, “they talked their way through the celebrity spectrum, about who was uglier in real life, who had gained weight recently, and who was gay. Speculating on male homosexuality was the most popular subject. The only actors they didn’t seem to consider closet cases were Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford. Han Solo could not be gay, the majority ruled. Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck, on the other hand, were two candelabra shy of Liberace. Right or wrong, this was a conversation where he could hold his own, and he felt a kind of relief he hadn’t known in days.”
There are passages in this novel as stark and heart-rending as that one is funny, which makes “Last One In” a worthy addition to the curious but indispensable shelf of war satires.
Ellie
Books of the Times
Our Man in Iraq, Embedded Unhappily
By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
LAST ONE IN
By Nicholas Kulish
261 pages. Ecco/Harper Perennial. $13.95.
An appendix to Nicholas Kulish’s debut novel about a gossip columnist who finds himself embedded with the marines at the outset of the Iraq invasion notes that among the author’s favorite books are Evelyn’s Waugh’s “Scoop” and “Sword of Honour” trilogy, Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” and Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” Normally, this might be leading with one’s chin. But Mr. Kulish, the Berlin bureau chief for The New York Times, was actually embedded with the marines in 2003 while working for The Wall Street Journal, and he has brought home a story worthy of his literary idols. This is a very good book: funny, harrowing and sympathetic.
The novel’s protagonist, Jimmy Stephens, is a somewhat pointless person, a nightcrawler for The Daily Herald of the Manhattan demimonde. He lands himself in scalding water after he mistakes a pair of expensive cowboy boots that he spots in a suspiciously noisy stall in the men’s room of Nobu as belonging to a famous movie actor. It turns out that the boots did not belong to the actor. At the time, he was halfway around the world on location, and not, as Jimmy has written in his column, having extramarital sex in the men’s room of that tony TriBeCa eatery.
Note, by the way, the embedded homage to Evelyn Waugh. Remember the name of the chap in “Scoop” who is mistakenly sent off to cover the war in Ishmaelia? The one who writes a nature column for The Daily Beast called “Lush Places” (“Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole”)? John Boot.
Jimmy has two choices: get the boot (sorry) and pay for his legal expenses in the lawsuit filed by the enraged actor, or become a last-minute imposter/replacement for The Daily Herald’s war correspondent, James Stephens. Stephens, a veteran of every war zone on the planet, has just been run over by a delivery truck on the meaner streets of Manhattan. At this late stage in the game, the Pentagon will not accept substitute correspondents. Faced with this nightmarish Hobson’s choice, Jimmy collects his gas mask and boards his flight to Kuwait, where the fun, and horror, await.
Mr. Kulish has (no surprise) a reporter’s ear for dialogue and detail, and a novelist’s skill at constructing a cracking good story. He tells it briskly and with genuine wit. The pages fly by faster than a Predator drone.
We meet cynical, hard-bitten war correspondents (real ones, that is) and human, coarse and engaging young marines, as well as their faintly sinister, tightly wound executive officer, Lieutenant Katzenbach. If I have a quibble, it would be that some of the soldiers seem rather reminiscent of some of the characters in “Catch-22,” but this is a minor criticism and perhaps invalid. Types are types: they exist from war to war. If only Milo Minderbinder had had access to eBay!
The best moments in the book, indeed, have a Yossarian feel to them, echoing the justifiable cowardice of the hero of Heller’s masterpiece. In one LOL-funny scene, Jimmy’s unit comes under Iraqi artillery fire. (That’s not the laugh-out-loud part.) Cowering in his foxhole, he tries to call the New York office on a satellite phone, but in the confusion dials CNN. His Daily Herald boss, eating breakfast granola, suddenly hears his reporter’s voice screaming at the CNN anchor, as the call is broadcast live to the entire world:
“Get me out of here! Get me out of here! Oh, my God, I’m going to die. You have to get me out of here.” It goes on and gets rather graphic as Jimmy, under the impression that he’s speaking to someone at The Herald, pleads to be unembedded.
Normally, this would be a career-ending moment, but thanks to the intervention of his new comrades, the marines, who have come to adopt him, Jimmy gets his redemption. By the end, he’s a very different lad from the one who used to devote his professional energies to writing about who’s doing what to Lindsay Lohan.
His prior career actually allows him to bond with his new macho companions. One night, after he has revealed his secret to them in the heavily mined vastness of the Iraqi desert, “they talked their way through the celebrity spectrum, about who was uglier in real life, who had gained weight recently, and who was gay. Speculating on male homosexuality was the most popular subject. The only actors they didn’t seem to consider closet cases were Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford. Han Solo could not be gay, the majority ruled. Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck, on the other hand, were two candelabra shy of Liberace. Right or wrong, this was a conversation where he could hold his own, and he felt a kind of relief he hadn’t known in days.”
There are passages in this novel as stark and heart-rending as that one is funny, which makes “Last One In” a worthy addition to the curious but indispensable shelf of war satires.
Ellie