Last One In

by Nicholas Kulish

HarperCollins

Paperback, 288 pages, $13.95

By Jonathon Walter

cover art
 Amazon

There hasn’t exactly been a glut of fiction dealing with the current war in Iraq—understandable, as most wartime fiction is written after the war it covers is long over. A current war is vast, unknowable, and uncertain. Only afterward, long after the last bullets have flown, does a war obtain a natural narrative: its beginning, middle, and end. Nicholas Kulish’s flawed but fascinating novel Last One In manages to curtail this by covering only the opening weeks of the war, all the way from the first invasion to George W. Bush’s ill-fated aircraft carrier appearance (that of the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner).

Kulish is clearly positioning his novel as an updated analogue to classic absurdity-of-war novels like Catch-22 and, more directly, Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, and while his workmanlike, awkwardly expositional, and somewhat flatfooted prose style (example: “‘You’ll find something,’ Jimmy said quietly. It felt so inadequate. ‘Yeah, and even if I do ...’ Tim said, trailing off. They both knew that with the seismic shifts in print media and the slave wages at the snarky Web sites, Tim would pull down half of what he needed to support his family”) prevents his novel from reaching the level of those works, there is enough wit and perception shot through it to make it a more than worthwhile read.

The story concerns Jimmy Stephens, a New York gossip reporter, who, through a series of snafus and coincidences, finds himself at the business end of an ultimatum: either embed with a platoon of Marines in Iraq, or get fired. Jimmy chooses to go to Iraq, and his utter ignorance about any and all wartime procedures effectively mirrors the reader’s. Jimmy’s naiveté has another nifty function: at numerous times during the narrative he asks the Big Questions that everyone else is either too jaded or too afraid to ask, and every so often this leads to a response that’s so direct it almost knocks you out cold, as when a current embedded reporter tells him:

Every couple years we find an excuse to invade one of these banana republics, and we barely remember why afterward, like the morning after a drunken one-night stand ... This military costs close to a trillion a year. We have to justify that expense.

Stephens goes on to compare this phenomenon with an off-Broadway theater that spent way too much money on a smoke machine for a performance of The Tempest and now must bend over backwards to put smoke in all their shows, whether it’s needed or not. The comparison is so perfect that it’s never going to leave my head, especially whenever a politician expresses a desire for “military action” against some nation or another.

Much of the novel consists of Jimmy’s ride into Iraq with a small Marine platoon, and they’re the usual collection of stereotypes: the untried kid eager for action who just can’t handle it when it finally happens, the grizzled veteran, etc. It’s to Kulish’s credit that he occasionally is able to break through these stereotypes inventively and present these Marines as somewhat of individuals: 19 year-old Ramos’s mission to gather as much abandoned Iraqi booty as he can and sell it on eBay to help his wife and child is the kind of resourceful upending of war fiction cliché that makes this book stand out.

While there are some unfortunate lapses into slapsticky pratfalls near its end (Stephens’ panicked live-across-the-nation phone call to CNN during a bombing raid is so tonally inconsistent with the rest of the book that it’s amazing an editor let it through), Last One In nicely combines an outsider’s look at the current quagmire in Iraq with obvious and not-so-obvious references to classic war novels to come up with something that, while not exactly a classic, is certainly a distinguished piece of work, and certainly more perceptive about the war than any 24 hours of cable news might be.

— 28 August 2007
 
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“There hasn’t exactly been a glut of fiction dealing with the current war in Iraq—understandable, as most wartime fiction is written after the war it covers is long over. A current war is vast, unknowable, and uncertain. Only afterward, long after the last bullets have flown, does a war obtain a natural narrative: its beginning, middle, and end.”

The US war in Iraq isn’t necessarily that kind of war. Not only is it part of continuous US military aggression, it’s an extension of the US attack against Iraq by bombings and sanctions all through the 1990s and into this decade, nearly two decades. And as former embedded reporters confirm, the current commander of the US occupation of Iraq, General Petraeus, is the man who repeatedly asked them before and after the 2003 thunder run into Baghdad, “Tell me where this ends.” Not only that, but the massive protests against the war - because it was known in advance by those who wanted to know what it was all about - happened not only in its early stages but actually before the March 2003 ground invasion in the fisrt place - making it possible for the earliest Iraq War novels to be written in 2003 and be published either that year or not long thereafter. Iraq war plays, some published in book form, appeared and were performed early. Currently there is a burgeoning number of Iraq War fictional films coming out, along with more novels, as can be seen in the (incomplete) lists below:

IRAQ WAR NOVELS:
Hocus Potus - Malcolm MacPherson
The Sirens of Baghdad - Yasmina Khadra
Last One In - Nicholas Kulish
Homefront - Tony Christini
Still the Monkey - Alivia C. Tagliaferri
The Scorpion’s Gate - Richard A. Clarke
The Human War - Noah Cicero
“Greendale” as graphic novel - Neil Young & Joshua Dysart
Homeland - Paul William Roberts

IRAQ WAR PLAYS:
The Wolf - Sean Huze
1984 - Tim Robbins
Peace Mom - Dario Fo
Stuff Happens - David Hare

IRAQ WAR FICTION FILMS AND VIDEO:
Lions for Lambs
Over There
Valley of the Wolves Iraq
The Tiger and the Snow
Stop-Loss
The Situation
G.I. Jesus
24
Home of the Brave
Grace is Gone
Valley of Elah
Rendition
Redacted
Homecoming
Embedded

Information on these titles linked here:
http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/the-petraeus-plan-to-abolish-america/

Petraeus satire here:
http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/the-petraeus-plan-to-abolish-america/

Comment by Tony Christini — August 28, 2007 @ 7:40 pm

Actually, the Iraq War fiction link is incorrect. This is it:
http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2007/08/11/iraq-war-fiction/

Comment by Tony Christini — August 28, 2007 @ 7:44 pm

Thanks very much for the info.  As to the comment about a “beginning, middle, and end”, certainly this war is not like other wars.  However, a natural progression of events from beginning through middle and end is a (some might say unfortunate) requirement of how humans look at history.  Something will be “finished”, anyway, whenever there happens to be a general troop withdrawal, and that most likely will be when commentators proclaim the war “over”.  Even though nothing could be further from the truth.  The book actually touches on all these topics, it’s a fine piece of work.

Comment by Jon Walter — August 29, 2007 @ 12:57 pm

There is no “natural” progression to any war. Too much depends on who makes what happen when, including what happens on the “homefront”. Certain crucial aspects of the US invasion and occupation are essentially as well understood as they will ever be. Of course one can’t predict the future, but one can document and dramatize the well known past, including the recent past. For example, nothing can ever make the invasion and occupation less immoral and illegal that it was known to be before and upon launching it. Look at Israel in the occupied territories - they are still killing and dying there decades after invading. It is well known, to those who want to know, the nature of those decades then and now. Things could have progressed differently, as they might or might not in the future. The idea of waiting 50 years or 100 years or whatever it may be, or even two decades, or two years to write about something that is essentially knowable as it happens, and therefore able to be dramatized immediately thereafter, is pointless. German leaders after World War II were hanged for what the US leaders have done in invading and occupying Iraq. Nothing that happens in the future can change that reality. That is no small reality that ought to have been dramatized long since by now, and has been a bit.

I make no evaluation of Kulish’s novel. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

Comment by Tony Christini — August 29, 2007 @ 7:10 pm

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