They do. They do. And there were parts in Fobbit that were downright hilarious.

I actually thought Fobbit was pretty good. It does tell an important, not very well understood story about the modern military. Fobbits have their place too.

Chris

Yeah, that was a my bad, and an actual result of said PBR haze. I had ordered a couple of paper books as well when I order yours and wasn’t thinking straight. It’s on my Kindle now, read most of last night. In a way, I feel like Fobbit was a book that needed to be written, because it serves as a nice example of how even the military isn’t one monolithic “kill, kill, kill” organization.

So I guess you got what I wrote about this book insulting all the people the literary business doesn’t like. Of the three Iraq novels to come out in the last year, all have been anti-war, and two strongly anti-Bush and anti-religion. Billy Lynn even has a scene where one of the soldiers sees a private citizen carrying a concealed pistol, and gets furious about it. Soldiers in general are very pro-carry and pro-gun rights, but for some reason this soldier hates to see citizens with weapons. I bet Ben Fountain hates to see citizens with weapons. And I can guarantee most of the literary world hates to see citizens with weapons. Odd coincidence, how the views of the extremely liberal author who never served in the military somehow wound up in the mind of a soldier in his book…

I have an article that’s supposed to be printed in the Austin-American Statesman in a month or so that specifically addresses what you said about being a volunteer who knew what you were doing. I hate that belief some people have, like we were victimized. I had bad experiences with casualties also, I was in the war and knew what I was doing there. I was happy to be there. Nobody needs to act like I wound up there because I was too stupid to know better.

Man-crush away, and I’m looking forward to your review. Curious though, you said you ordered my book? It’s an ebook only, did you not get it automatically?

I felt insulted because as a guy who supported both the war in Iraq and the A-Stan, just not our way of fighting them, I felt ridiculed and mocked as a guy who didn’t understand war, just followed Dubya around in some PBR haze. I was proud to be a Soldier and proud to go there. And yes I vote Republican and believe in Jesus, so I felt as if Abram’s descriptions of Abe Shrinkle were a poke at me. And that made me mad, because obviously that Fobbit had never had to ride back to a FOB with his turret gunner, who being in a Guard unit I had grown up playing baseball with, dead in his lap and then throw away that ACU blouse because it would never come clean. Just sorta hacked me off. Once “Proof of our Resolve” gets here and I read it, I will post a review on Amazon and link it to you. Just ordered it yesterday.

hey, I’m just glad my man crush on you is acceptable, I don’t think Tam would be as receptive of my un-requistied man-love.