>> c-span2 providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceedings and keep public policy events in every weekend book tv abcafifteen years in a television network devoted to nonfiction books authors. c-span2 created by the cable-tv industry and brought to you as a public service by a local cable or satellite provider. watch us on hd, like us on facebook and falls on twitter. >> iraqi war veteran next on book tv discusses in his short story collection allows soldiers fought in the experiences they had. this is about 45 minutes. >> all right. thank you. there we go. thank you so much for coming here. good to be here. this is my first time in l.a.

be good to me. it is a thrill to be here monday . so the book is 12 short stories all from different perspectives. in them going to start out with -- just read the opening of the story about an artillery unit. the story is called ten. >> south. an artillery unit on this large base. you are in a combat zone. large, really secure. they are of little, major cities they have, you know, like workout facilities to my chow hall. there would be some marines that never left about. this story is set on kampf loser

some marine had recorded the song set to the tune of hotel california. the course was, welcome to the hotel camp. you're in a combat zone. go get your ice cream cone. it's sort of gives you the field . but an artillery unit. they're actually engaged. all right. this morning again dropped about 270 pounds of icn. we took out a group of insurgents and then went to the chow hall for lunch. i got fish and lima beans. i tried the healthy. at the table all nine of a smiling and laughing. i still jittery. i keep twisting my wedding band. and our number one guy on the amonte team with me in poland it a big plate of ravioli and pop tarts. and before digging -- the persian gulf, they have pop

tarts are rare? >> a lot of pockets around. >> another butters, to. >> that's weird. before digging in he looks up and down the table and says to my can't believe we finally had an r.d. mission. sanchez says, it's about time we killed someone. even i chuckle. we have been there two months. one of the few artillery units actually doing artillery except so far we only shot elimination missions. some of the other guns in the battery and shot bad guys, but not us, not until today. today the whole damn battery fired and we know we hit our target. jewett to has been pretty quiet asks how many insurgents to you think we killed? what? platoon sergeant, hq i don't have platoons. why do you think we need the whole damn battery.

we didn't. it's. they're one of us all to have gone time on an actual target. even one round of icn would be enough to take out a platoon in open desert. it was one. he shakes his of slowly. is heavy shoulders touching -- hunched over the table. platoon sized element, that's what it was. two rounds again is what we need to take it out. but i to me no battery. i met and argon. how many did just dark and kill? hell am i supposed to know. platoon size is like 40. figure six guns. i don't know, six people per gun . we killed exactly six people. he starts doing the math, scratching out the numbers. divided by nine marines on the gun and you personally have

killed 07 something people. that's like a torso and head, maybe a leg. that's not funny. we definitely get more. the best shots in the battery. we are just firing on the quarter deflections they give us we are better shops. with around down a rabbit hole and 18 miles. but even with we were on target. >> we were on target. >> okay. we were on target, but the other guns, those rounds could if it first. maybe everyone was dead. i could see that, the shrapnel flooding in the shattered corpses. even if the rounds at first it doesn't mean everyone was dead. maybe some insurgent had shrapnel in the chest. he sticks his tongue and clutches his chest dramatically. then he comes down and blows his head off.

he was dying already. yeah, sure. i guess. i don't feel like i killed anybody. i think i would know. no. you wouldn't know. not until you had seen the bodies. the table wine. it's better this way. doesn't it feel weird to you? after our first real mission to just be eating lunch. getty. it feels good. we just killed some bad guys. sanchez gives a quick nod. it is good. i don't think i killed anybody. technically i am the one that pull the lynyrd. i fired the thing. you just loaded. like i could not pull a lynyrd. yeah, but you didn't. drop it. it's a cruise serve weapon. it takes a crew. if we use balancer to kill someone in the states to wonder

what kind of crime there would charges with. murder, what are you, an idiot? yakima murder, but for each of us and what degree? we loaded. if i loaded m-16 and handed it would say i shot somebody. it's a cruiser weapon. it grew serve weapon. it takes a crew. i loaded, but we get the ammo from the afb. shouldn't they be responsible? one of the fp? one of the factory workers and made the ammo or the taxpayers to pay for it. you know why? because that is retarded. the lieutenant gave the order. >> you believe that? you think officers would take the hit? how long you been in the military. listen to me. we are done six. we are responsible for that gun, and we just kill some bad guys with our gun. that's a good day's work.

>> i still don't feel like a killed anybody. in lets out a long breath and then he shakes his head and starts laughing. yakima welcome all of us except you. [applause] >> i'm happy to be here tonight. phil as tested do something in new york and i could not do it. i think we probably all agree that if the short story thing doesn't work go he can start that singing career. [laughter] come back to town, start giving gallegus. >> they are recording this. i first read his book over a year ago. i was interviewing him for a semi weekly series that i have the time talking to people about

veterans' issues. phil was one of the first people, maybe even the first one i spoke to. the kind of nervously asked me if i would read his book. i said of course and was blown away by it. although last decade have written a lot of the work that has come about. elway said that i thought there were some great books. a number of others. i kept saying it was going to take it dictators so for one of those books to really grab you, grab me at least and take the war and took it apart and reassembled it in a piece of literature and a piece of art. of course i was right. and that was -- fills book was the first book that really all of the pieces were working for me it once. i didn't it didn't really hit me

as to why. it's upstairs catholic as to how we see the war. were getting this picture of the war, all these different perspectives. it's a systemic look. i wonder if putting a collection of stories together is always been funneling the best writers. and i think what was the process of pulling the collection together. how did you come up with the stories that you felt like you had to tell in this collection? >> well, i started out writing a lot bad stories. >> i started out pirating really bad poetry.

i started the first story a few months will buy up back. the first story is about a marine his -- was in the second battle and shot dogs. that's something that happened. and i guess that was sort of my -- and that's about him coming home which was my way of talking about the weirdness of the reentry into, you know, american life. and i was working on a novel alongside the stories but very quickly the stores became the most important thing to me for precisely that reason. you come back for more, especially now because it's less than 1% surf. so, you know, i'm from new york. i go back to new york and one of -- on one of the few veterans people meet.

and they would ask, so, how was it going? in the feel like you can actually explained, sort of pontificate to them what it is even though everybody kind of policies this little small piece of it. and everybody interprets their experienced and. in sao one-and-a-half the stories that would tell not just of the stories of the grunts or artillery units are whenever but the experiences of support staff, what it was like to be a chaplain to a mortuary affairs specialist and how those people tell with what happened overseas and what happened when they can make. it felt like with a collection i could hit the same themes. the act of killing is pretty central. but his relationship could not

be more different than the artillerymen in that piece that i just read or some of the other characters in the book. i was able to talk about the same things from different angles which was useful to try and think about what this meant. and so i sort of slowly work by until i had what felt like a cohesive piece of work even though none of the stories -- there are no characters the crossover. >> especially in this story the guise of breaking down. the artillery guys, it seems that people of trying to make sense of what happened. these guys a using numbers and other stories, our these veterans or their friends attempting to make sense of this thing?

>> right. well, we sometimes think of war as this sort of other experience you sort of a journey to the heart of darkness and gaze into the abyss and come back sadder but wiser with this inexpressible knowledge. but it's also, the military is a job the go into with all these stories the have been told. then you come back home to all the stories about the military the people believe. and so is a great bit, what it's like to go to war. as the combat veteran what it feels like to kill someone. it is possible angry answer effused being honest, not a fun thing. doesn't feel like a for comparing. if you ask that same car 2040 years later his answer might be

very different depending upon the people who have been around a man who he is and what is whether. it's this kind of slow way that the characters need to navigate. some of them are dealing with things in theater. of the stories is about to marines, one who kills a teenage combat and then asked his friend to tell everybody else of the unit that he's the one you did it. the guy who actually killed the teenage combat does not want to have to tell a story and talk about it. his friend is working through what that meant. some of them are dealing with it when they come back into american society and deal with the projections of the way in which they can present themselves.

>> in terms of presenting the what does fiction to five what is fiction allow you to do? what does allow them to react to possibly? >> welcome of fiction is you put yourself in those goals. so some fiction invites the reader to do think about that experience from the inside which was really important to me. important to me to bring the reader in and have narrator's the would not necessarily agree with each other so you can start making evaluative judgments about the sort of claims about their experience they're making. it also lets you pressurize things. the questions that i came back with i could not have explored

those things through a memoir. but for me personally at think i find it hard because the stories that you want to tow yourself about what he'd been through. but if you put it into fiction you take those ideas that you have about the world and put it into a story and make the characters real and invariably those characters in the process of making them real just destroy all the notions that you had about what you were originally writing. and i guess that's one of the things that's really about -- valuable. if you do it well because i have written memoir essays.

you can do the same thing when you are interrogating your own experience. >> do you want to read a little bit more? >> this is the opening of a story called bodies about a mortuary affairs marine. >> for a long time i was angry. i did not want to talk about it. i would not tell anyone i have been. if people knew, if they pressed, would tell them lives. there was this high g corpse lying in the sun. he had been there for days. i would look at my audience and size them up. he would be surprised. that's where i did.

funny are said. guys like it funny with lots of gore and a grin on your face girls is sad with a thousand yards tear out to the distance as they gaze upon stories of where they can't quite see. either way it is the same story. rules of policies to marines maneuvering and decides he will go show what our regular guy he is and how. as i tell the story the lieutenant-colonel is a large area in barrow man with fresh past cammies in a short, tight mustache with a huge hand. he comes up to us and says, year, let me help you. and without waiting for us to respond or warn them of he reaches down in grams a body bag i describe how he launches of as though he were doing a cleaning jerk. he was strong, given that, i'd say, but the bag ripped from the edge of the trucks back gate and

the skin tears through the stomach. running blood and fluid pop out. human sippets in the face running guns mustache. if i'm telling the stories and i can stop there. on telling it funny there's one more crucial bit which corporal g had done when he told the story to me for the first time back in 2004 before either of us had collected remains or knew what we were talking about. i don't know where your the story. the colonel's grand like a bitch head and he made a we're high pitch skiing noise deepen his throat like a wheezing dog. this was to show as precisely how uncovered in rodding fluids if you get the doors are. or i liked about the store was that even if it happened more last it was still tillable

should there be after the public there was anybody, not even corbels he talked about the marines the -- remains the white. some felt the spirits of the debt-about the bodies. it creeps amount. you could feel it, especially when you look of the faces. got to be more than that. guy started swearing that they could feel spirits everywhere. not just around the bodies shes. all the dead. even the dead of iraqi history, the acadian empire and the mongols and the american invasion. i never felt tenedos. leave the body in the sun and the outer layer of skin detaches from the lower. you feel it's live around and enhance its really a body in water and everything swells and the skin feels waxy and take but recognizably human. that's all. except for the end corporal g everyone in mortuary affairs talked about coast.

[applause] >> the route every story a lot of these are told in the first person, but you seem to be occasionally celebrating the marshall and even the masculine and interrogating it. you're kind of working every story at both levels. did you plan on that? did these stories, for instance, mortuary affairs for you talked to some of these guys. did you come home when he started the story and know how your gourd to work that, use that tactic you know -- >> i never had any idea. i knew they're were things that would interesting. i have heard the story that i just told, but i also -- the way

that the mortuary affairs guys start to drop their job -- and there's also a good memoirs. very different. i usually have a couple different pieces that i knew -- and as the opening of the story. maybe four or five more significant scenes that had. and i knew that they talk to each other or at least stayed in my mind it seems to fit together. some of them were not stories about war, one was about going out to a club. but this seems to resonate. out write the story and again and again and send it to friends

. intel i'm sort of had a good feel for why those different things talks to each other. yeah. >> you also seem to be indicting storytellers. sort of like the nature of war stories, now they're told, what they're told, who gets to tell them. >> right. >> well, there are a lot of -- >> to you of the stories now? >> too high on the stories? >> corbeil g. yeah. well, there is lot of room for abortions in storytelling. it does not have to be this to read? in know, the story of my drunken night and what happens. you tell the story and the first time you see where you get the laughs. the next time the story is streamlined and eventually you have to the have this recitation of what happened.

that's an effective story and feels totally false and the toilet. and the story becomes the memory. one of the weird things writing this book was sometimes i draw on things that had actually happened to me. i would change them. and then afterwards i would be like, what was the real story and what is the story then i wrote down? it's difficult to tell. and so the -- which isn't the same as saying the stories a bullish it. it's just that, you know, that kind of interrogation about what you're telling and why you're telling it is important. and this is -- to go back to the thing about them more, he throws up his hands. he relies on divine elimination's that he can even tell logical story about himself. i think that that kind of questioning about why you're telling the story and the

purpose is important for being able to communicate anything real. >> i had a strange -- it's been about a year since i read your book and your manuscript. i swear that there was a memory that i thought was mind. i was like, no, that's one of those stories. the guys are getting wasted in a bar in new york city. i did that once a taurus. and it confused me four minutes. i also talk about -- because i've been thinking about this war while. looking forward to it in trying to figure out and excavate communal, is there any solid ground in telling war stories? and if not why. >> i think they're is a process. go back to the my atlanta's bit

that i mentioned earlier. we don't figure anything out on our own. >> a vietnam veteran who wrote an amazing novel. he spent about 35 years writing it. it came out in print in 2009. a brilliant look at combatants and marine infantry. >> a great book. >> and is also written about men and war. and so it is this, you know, there is sometimes a notion that you can't communicate war experience which i think is ultimately harmful because you need of the people to help figure out which been through. the example that i use is it doesn't have to be war. can be a better relationship. you had the experience of talking to someone, my girlfriend is psychopath in the tell you what she did and they like when you sound like the

hassle of a story. maybe you're the dick. -- but that's why we go to other people. if your inexperience you are deeply emotionally invested. if you been the war, certainly you will be emotionally invested. it's hard to figure out on your own. i think that storytelling is alternately extremely important but fraught with pitfalls. and that, you know, the narrator of the story of just read is aware of some of the ways of war stories work or can work. he manipulates them because it does not want to open him up to the other kinds of questions that would come up of the actual is first on the real stuff on his mind. >> there are all fairly sophisticated stories and maneuvers of fact and fiction. should we open it up to the

crowd to see? >> sure. >> we take insults. >> yes. we charge more. >> one of the things that i was thinking about while i was reading this, my father was a veteran of world war ii in every major battle of the pacific and i heard nothing about any of it until he was in his 80's and dying. we've come a little ways where we you're at home can try and understand some part of it. >> i've heard that a lot. a lot of people of talked about the world war ii generation. they never talked. things came out from people were so published for if you read sam

hines written and said in the 1960's about going to college and the g.i. bill. there's this extra housing for all the events. they walk around. those should be for the chairman they go to college and are alone. they can't talk about the stuff of the chairman. the other thing about world war ii that's kind of -- you know, some of the most insane horrific war stories i have never heard of been told to me by veterans of world war ii. think it is weird if you have this experience, were at its best is in of the thing.

its industrial scale killing of the human beings, and i think it's hot. the things a stay in your mind are the relief work tuftings. it's kind of odd to combat without -- come back to being called a hero if you feel like, i'm proud of my service, but in also is complicated. and then, of course, the feed on generation and a very different reception. i think that colors the way that they start talking about what they've been through. what you said is true. [inaudible question]

>> thank you. >> discourage you. and found that -- i wonder if he had actually given you, you know, like the things they carry by tim o'brien and some books like war is a racket. most of it when tom cruise movie came out on the fourth of july. did any of that affect you? >> that was for me? summary. my father did discourage me from joining, but he wasn't a reader. so there was no literature roundabout war.

and i think he probably would have -- his best device to me once i did join was kind of cliche. don't go out and try to be a hero. my father saw guys you want to be here as i. also saugers standing in front of him not to challenge it hit by sniper. he knew that it was, as bill said, in its past circumstances call you know, a brutal, and is pushing. i'm not sure answered your question. >> and uses red to more? >> we were talking about -- i read that after adding the marine corps. in my 20's in the opinion of

our union listening to. >> zero one bass fell about the literature war with as mattered to him and if you feel linkage between tim o'brien orville to go? if you feel like your book is falling, telling the same kinds stores. >> there are a lot of books. ahead a professor in college, a fantastic politburo. when he learned was joined the marine corps he had me read this

whole story. to settle my head with the little bit of wisdom. yeah. i mean, pretty grim. some of the stories, was reading the get soldier. i was riding one of the stories i was reading things to inform me about kind of technical matters so that i get the details right but also reading stuff to get the emotional things are. sometimes up was one of literature and some times of was diary of a country priest in a,

whenever it might be. >> well read. earlier, you were talking about the individual experience of war mine was a special the tiny. when i first started writing about the first gulf war and when you know, i read dozens and dozens of the books that were written by journalists. i'll read the ran reports it is i really didn't know what was happening outside of very small area of operation. so you were an officer. >> i was reading special inspector construction reports, a lot of memoirs, i talked to marines in mind as something about the subject.

i had to do a lot of research. it tried to get it is responsible. >> by nitpicking famously said war is an enemy of the poor. thought on that? also, the new war front emerging with technology. >> while i don't know. i think that i could answer that question depending on what were your talking about.

this huge majority of the cost was borne by the iraqi people. it was and continues to be strange if so. the citizenry and when you join the military you are interested yourself to the u.s. body politic. they're going to ensure the you are fighting for reasons. airlines and efforts would be well spent. it's very strange to come back. , of proof things happening. to get at the military command a

went back to new york or you just don't have to think about the fact it were war. the decisions that were making is a country are hugely important. but it's easy not to think about the very small percentage of the population that serves. the question about the technology of warfare commanding drone strikes and special operations, the thing that whenever we employ violent force which i think sometimes we should we, as citizens, should keep the a very watchful eye and a government hadn't been sure that we do isn't as much force that is possible. >> anyone else?

>> thank you for coming in. the hot by and the volunteer army. has that changed the nature of service if any for those who actually fought it? >> total was just talking about was a big part of it. much more disconnected. i think that the five between civilians and military is pretty wide. and i think a lot of veterans feel that very acutely. we sort of come back to a positive perception the people

get think rather service. it's not like after vietnam. but there's also that degree of apathy. there is an extremely professional military. when you read about the things that went on in world war ii, or you think about the kind of -- it's a highly professional military that's only volunteers is. it changes the dynamic of the unit's greatly in a town of lice >> over here.

>> was there any kind of growing political sense that you were over there and you were -- you have invaded the wrong country? as a growing, creeping sense of that i was mainly interested in showing how the policies we enacted play out. we are kind of in this bizarre space. we invaded with very little sense, with very little planning for the aftermath. we would be greeted as liberators. you know, the state department

basically predicted that would happen. there were generals who argued that we needed a more robust presence or else things with spin into chaos. those people were pushed to the side very aggressively. and the consequences of that in the early policy decisions kind of played out over the years. so there are certain details. but i wasn't particularly interested in debating at the grand policy level. i want people think about what it be -- what it meant to be one of those marines are to be a state department guy trying to actually build a society of and what that was like and how it was affected by the past. what then was like on a day-to-day basis.

>> one are two more questions. >> please wait for the my. >> or you writing when you deploy or thinking of writing? did you call when you were thinking of the stories when he wrote them were you taking notes when you were deployed? >> i took a lot of notes while was deployed. i was writing, but not about war i was writing mostly very, very bad short stories. at the midway through and lead it at the ballot quit writing turn world war two. i felt like an excuse me for all the things i had written that were just awful. but i did come back with notes and a lot of memories. i think more than the sort of

source material i had been due to the nature of my job i travel on. i spent time with a lot of different types of units during a lot of different types of things. so that's certainly affected how this book -- what this book was like. the talk with the guise of mortuary affairs, infantry guys and you get a different picture. you get a different picture from people -- to friends name that that were both scout cavalry deployed to the same area, both worked with the same translator, but one was in 2006 and one was two years later. they're wars could not have been more to for mainly what it gave me was just the subject this fall vitally important i had to

do a lot of work as i was writing the collection. it mattered to me. how was writing in the state of terror of getting it wrong. because of my obligation. the obligation i felt to the material. obligation which also met selling uncomfortable things, things that they might upset people. >> optic the last question. wars make riders and mets. i wonder for you what's the -- as these wars begin to fade, certainly they are on the front pages and more, what do you think should in door in the culture in terms of understanding of the young