TimeNowEncore
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Links to all TIme Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature posts in chronological order from 2012-2024.
In honor of Thanksgiving: "...BLLHW takes place on Thanksgiving, fittingly enough..." //acolytesofwar.com/2013/08/18/thank-you-for-your-service-ben-fountains-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk/
“Thank You for Your Service”: Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Most vets know that queasy ambivalence that comes when a well-meaning American tells them, “Thank you for your service.” The sentiment is sincere, but also a little bit feeble, maybe even something…
acolytesofwar.com
November 27, 2025 at 12:12 PM
In honor of Thanksgiving: "...BLLHW takes place on Thanksgiving, fittingly enough..." //acolytesofwar.com/2013/08/18/thank-you-for-your-service-ben-fountains-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk/
"I’m very interested in the movement of war writing from the page to the stage, which is happening in many interesting ways across the nation, and was happy to participate in a small way in the phenomenon." From June 4, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/06/04/h...
Here, There, and Everywhere: War Writing Notes From All Over
1. For the past year, I’ve been the Mentor Program coordinator for Ron Capps’ Washington, DC-based Veterans Writing Project. As such as I’ve connected many aspiring veteran-writers with experienced…
acolytesofwar.com
November 26, 2025 at 2:22 PM
"I’m very interested in the movement of war writing from the page to the stage, which is happening in many interesting ways across the nation, and was happy to participate in a small way in the phenomenon." From June 4, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/06/04/h...
"Westhusing’s death was the story of a moment, but even in its time it did not really grip the American public, who wanted to hear about heroes, not senior officers who cracked up and couldn’t take it any more." From May 30, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/05/30/m...
Memorial Day 2016: Westhusing
When Colonel Theodore S. “Ted” Westhusing died in Iraq in 2005, he was the highest-ranking US military officer to have lost his life in either Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom.…
acolytesofwar.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:56 PM
"Westhusing’s death was the story of a moment, but even in its time it did not really grip the American public, who wanted to hear about heroes, not senior officers who cracked up and couldn’t take it any more." From May 30, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/05/30/m...
"What can a mother do when the military-industrial beast that has comfortably supported her professional ambition bares its blood-and-lucre stained teeth? Not much apparently, except run like hell." From May 19, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/05/19/e...
Elizabeth Marro’s Casualties: What’s a Mother to Do?
Mothers figure prominently in Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds and Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, though the portraits are focalized through the eyes of their soldier sons and the vi…
acolytesofwar.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:34 PM
"What can a mother do when the military-industrial beast that has comfortably supported her professional ambition bares its blood-and-lucre stained teeth? Not much apparently, except run like hell." From May 19, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/05/19/e...
"Much is of interest in A Hard and Heavy Thing. I found the battle scene, for example, exciting, especially since it reflected aspects of my own experience of being trapped in a truck rocked by explosion with casualties onboard." From May 2, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/05/02/o...
On Wisconsin: Matthew J. Hefti’s A Hard and Heavy Thing
It’s been hard not to notice the recent flury of writing and art by Wisconsin veterans. Matthew J. Hefti’s novel A Hard and Heavy Thing, about two childhood friends from Wisconsin tested by b…
acolytesofwar.com
November 23, 2025 at 2:10 PM
"Much is of interest in A Hard and Heavy Thing. I found the battle scene, for example, exciting, especially since it reflected aspects of my own experience of being trapped in a truck rocked by explosion with casualties onboard." From May 2, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/05/02/o...
"We’re all mostly smiley-face here, which is great; nothing wrong with enjoying a little company. Just the meals alone were special..." From April 24, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/04/24/p...
Pictures from the War Lit Front
Above and below’s a collection of photographs from this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. Apologies for my mug being in so many of them; all credit goes to …
acolytesofwar.com
November 22, 2025 at 1:54 PM
"We’re all mostly smiley-face here, which is great; nothing wrong with enjoying a little company. Just the meals alone were special..." From April 24, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/04/24/p...
"Within an hour of arrival, for example, I was trading stories with Colby Buzzell, whom I had never met before, at a taco food truck near the Los Angeles Convention Center, the site of the conference this year." From April 12, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/04/12/a...
AWP LA AAR (Association of Writers and Writing Program Los Angeles After Action Review)
With at least twelve events featuring authors who have written about deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, the recent Association of Writers and Writing Program conference offered plenty of opportuni…
acolytesofwar.com
November 21, 2025 at 8:34 PM
"Within an hour of arrival, for example, I was trading stories with Colby Buzzell, whom I had never met before, at a taco food truck near the Los Angeles Convention Center, the site of the conference this year." From April 12, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/04/12/a...
"Among the hundreds of offerings are at least 11 events focused on writing about war or featuring authors of prominent war literature works. I’m fortunate to be part of two of them, and I’m excited about attending as many of the others as I can." March 16, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/26/a...
AWP16 War Writing Preview
The Association of Writers and Writing Program conference—AWP for short–is the year’s largest gathering of literary fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry authors; small and big publishing …
acolytesofwar.com
November 20, 2025 at 1:50 PM
"Among the hundreds of offerings are at least 11 events focused on writing about war or featuring authors of prominent war literature works. I’m fortunate to be part of two of them, and I’m excited about attending as many of the others as I can." March 16, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/26/a...
"Reviewing The Wasted Vigil in 2016, then, is a matter of restoring its pride-of-place in the annals of contemporary war literature, exploring the reasons for its semi-obscurity, and taking the measure of its interesting aspects." From March 20, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/20/n...
Nadeem Aslam’s The Wasted Vigil
The Wasted Vigil, Anglo-Pakistani author Nadeem Aslam’s ambitious novel about war in Afghanistan, did not arrive unheralded in 2008. Widely reviewed in major media outlets, it was pronounced the fi…
acolytesofwar.com
November 19, 2025 at 3:09 PM
"Reviewing The Wasted Vigil in 2016, then, is a matter of restoring its pride-of-place in the annals of contemporary war literature, exploring the reasons for its semi-obscurity, and taking the measure of its interesting aspects." From March 20, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/20/n...
"Antoon has lived in America since 1991, but The Corpse Washer reads as if it were a novel written from the Iraqi side, from the inside, with all the authority and righteousness of witness and victim that perspective entails." From March 12, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/12/s...
Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer
The subject of Iraqi-American author Sinan Antoon’s 2013 novel The Corpse Washer is the devastation wrought on an Iraqi family by the American occupation and subsequent sectarian violence. Antoon h…
acolytesofwar.com
November 19, 2025 at 2:41 AM
"Antoon has lived in America since 1991, but The Corpse Washer reads as if it were a novel written from the Iraqi side, from the inside, with all the authority and righteousness of witness and victim that perspective entails." From March 12, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/12/s...
"Costa Compagnie sought to capture this intensity and complexity through mixed-media art–an audacious project." From March 4, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/04/w...
War Dance: Costa Compagnie’s After Afghanistan
Two years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Felix Meyer-Christian, the artistic director for Costa Compagnie, a German performance art collective. Costa Compagnie productions combine images, video,…
acolytesofwar.com
November 17, 2025 at 3:20 PM
"Costa Compagnie sought to capture this intensity and complexity through mixed-media art–an audacious project." From March 4, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/03/04/w...
"Soldiers more than most people understand they are cogs in bigger systems and processes, but soldiers are also tantalized by dreams of heroic individualism and tend to think of their deployments as highly-personalized war dramas starring themselves." Feb 21, 2016 acolytesofwar.com/2016/02/21/m...
Matt Gallagher’s Youngblood
Matt Gallagher’s novel Youngblood arrives this month to high praise. Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times writes, “With Youngblood, [Gallagher] has written an urgent and deeply moving novel.” Rox…
acolytesofwar.com
November 16, 2025 at 2:31 PM
"Soldiers more than most people understand they are cogs in bigger systems and processes, but soldiers are also tantalized by dreams of heroic individualism and tend to think of their deployments as highly-personalized war dramas starring themselves." Feb 21, 2016 acolytesofwar.com/2016/02/21/m...
"By 2010, a generational divide between junior officers—lieutenants and captains—and field grade officers—majors and up—divided the officer corps in ways unforeseen in 2005." From February 7, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/02/07/c...
Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite’s War of the Encyclopaedists
A lieutenant’s story should always be interesting. Whether expressed in memoir, fiction, or poetry, tales of promising youth crashing against the chaos of battle and the colossus of military cultur…
acolytesofwar.com
November 15, 2025 at 1:39 PM
"By 2010, a generational divide between junior officers—lieutenants and captains—and field grade officers—majors and up—divided the officer corps in ways unforeseen in 2005." From February 7, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/02/07/c...
"Halloran’s Icarian fall could also be years of troubled drift post-service, collapsed relationships, or even his initial literary forays, inflected with high hopes and subsequent disappointments." From January 21, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/31/c...
Colin D. Halloran’s Icarian Flux
2015 brought two volumes of verse by authors whose previous works are central to the contemporary war poetry corpus. Interestingly, neither of the new works address Iraq or Afghanistan directly or …
acolytesofwar.com
November 14, 2025 at 11:25 PM
"Halloran’s Icarian fall could also be years of troubled drift post-service, collapsed relationships, or even his initial literary forays, inflected with high hopes and subsequent disappointments." From January 21, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/31/c...
"...the last thing the narrator is at the end of the story is calm, reasonable, and satisfactorily arrived at an explanation of what a true war story is all about." From January 23, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/23/w...
War Writing Anxiety of Influence: Bobbie Ann Mason and Tim O’Brien
“Anxiety of influence” is a phrase associated with literary critic Harold Bloom. It refers to the response of authors to important and beloved precursor authors by writing works that ei…
acolytesofwar.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:16 PM
"...the last thing the narrator is at the end of the story is calm, reasonable, and satisfactorily arrived at an explanation of what a true war story is all about." From January 23, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/23/w...
"Riffing on the latent implications of 'unmanned' in the phrase 'unmanned aerial devices,' Huber inquired what it meant for war fiction when its heroes are displaced from the battlefield to drone command centers 1000s of miles away." From Jan 17, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/17/c...
Contemporary Literature of the Forever Wars: MLA 2016
At the recent Modern Language Association (MLA) conference in Austin, Texas, six of us convened a panel titled “Contemporary Literature of the Forever Wars” to discuss the memoirs, fic…
acolytesofwar.com
November 12, 2025 at 3:13 PM
"Riffing on the latent implications of 'unmanned' in the phrase 'unmanned aerial devices,' Huber inquired what it meant for war fiction when its heroes are displaced from the battlefield to drone command centers 1000s of miles away." From Jan 17, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/17/c...
"Paul does not plan to be a distant, neglectful husband and Natalie has no intention of being tempted by another man, but so it happens in the novel and so it still happens to military couples." From January 11, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/11/t...
The Military Spouse’s Book Reviewed: Andria Williams’ The Longest Night
Congratulations to Andria Williams on the release of her novel The Longest Night this week. A domestic drama cum technological thriller about a military family during the Cold War, The Longest Nigh…
acolytesofwar.com
November 10, 2025 at 2:24 PM
"Paul does not plan to be a distant, neglectful husband and Natalie has no intention of being tempted by another man, but so it happens in the novel and so it still happens to military couples." From January 11, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/11/t...
"The protagonist of each novel begins as a hopeful idealist, mostly secular and not ideologically motivated, and each is brought to ruin by the experience of trying to assist Americans." From January 1, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/01/i...
Ikram Masmoudi’s War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction
Ikram Masmoudi’s most welcome War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction surveys a remarkable body of fiction that portrays from the inside Iraq’s 30+ year history of war, oppression, invasion, occupation…
acolytesofwar.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:26 PM
"The protagonist of each novel begins as a hopeful idealist, mostly secular and not ideologically motivated, and each is brought to ruin by the experience of trying to assist Americans." From January 1, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/01/i...
"The operators seem enormously pleased with their self-images as swashbuckling rogues who have killed many times with impunity." From December 26, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/26/b...
Special Ops Bro-Hymn: Ross Ritchell’s The Knife
US special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have been given fictional portraiture in Lea Carpenter’s Eleven Days and Aaron Gwyn’s Wynne’s War, but Ross Ritchell’s novel The Knif…
acolytesofwar.com
November 8, 2025 at 12:22 PM
"The operators seem enormously pleased with their self-images as swashbuckling rogues who have killed many times with impunity." From December 26, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/26/b...
"The poems’ military tones portray the contortions the Army inflicts not just on its members’ language and lived lives, but their identities and emotions, while the literary playfulness makes the contortions palatable...." From December 20, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/20/r...
Randy Brown’s Welcome to FOB Haiku
Randy Brown, aka “Charlie Sherpa,” is the keeper of Red Bull Rising, a popular web compendium of information and commentary about the seemingly incongruous subjects of war literature and the Army N…
acolytesofwar.com
November 7, 2025 at 10:17 PM
"The poems’ military tones portray the contortions the Army inflicts not just on its members’ language and lived lives, but their identities and emotions, while the literary playfulness makes the contortions palatable...." From December 20, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/20/r...
"Clearly and defiantly, though, Old Silk Road places soldier drug use on the Iraq and Afghanistan war-writing table..." From Dec 13, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/13/t...
The War on Drugs: Brandon Caro’s Old Silk Road
The narrator of Brandon Caro’s novel Old Silk Road is a junior enlisted Army medic named Norman “Doc” Rogers. Assigned to an Afghan National Army advisor team in Nangarhar Province, near Jalalabad,…
acolytesofwar.com
November 6, 2025 at 2:33 PM
"Clearly and defiantly, though, Old Silk Road places soldier drug use on the Iraq and Afghanistan war-writing table..." From Dec 13, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/13/t...
"Critics–the “beadles of literature,” as they were called by early American novelist John Neal–apparently are not as impressed by this year’s offerings as they have been in past years by war-writers such as Phil Klay, Ben Fountain, and Kevin Powers." Dec 7, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/07/2...
2015: An Updated War Literature and Art Compendium
I’ve updated the list of fiction, poetry, memoir, criticism, photography, and film I compiled last year about this time–new entries are bolded. 2015 was a busy year for contemporary war liter…
acolytesofwar.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:48 PM
"Critics–the “beadles of literature,” as they were called by early American novelist John Neal–apparently are not as impressed by this year’s offerings as they have been in past years by war-writers such as Phil Klay, Ben Fountain, and Kevin Powers." Dec 7, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/07/2...
"Williams’ point is that such anatopic moments created cognitive dissonance for American soldiers that made it hard to distinguish between war and peace, enemy and noncombatant, and, within themselves, their soldierly and civilian identities." From Nov 26, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/26/i...
Is War Academic? Contemporary War Literature Scholarship
The raucous digital media sphere spits out opinions in near real-time, but academics—PhD-wielding faculty members at colleges and universities—take longer to make up their minds. When ready, they p…
acolytesofwar.com
November 4, 2025 at 7:58 PM
"Williams’ point is that such anatopic moments created cognitive dissonance for American soldiers that made it hard to distinguish between war and peace, enemy and noncombatant, and, within themselves, their soldierly and civilian identities." From Nov 26, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/26/i...
"Atticus Lish’s novel Preparation for the Next Life, about the catastrophic dissolution of an Iraq veteran and everyone with whom he comes in contact... was a dour, doleful counterpoint to the triumphalist roar of the Veterans Day festivity." From November 17, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/17/v...
Vets Not Rising: Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life
New York City in the last week featured more veterans and veteran-writing events than three of me could attend. Every day and night brought a reading, a show, a ceremony, or a celebration of some s…
acolytesofwar.com
November 3, 2025 at 3:37 PM
"Atticus Lish’s novel Preparation for the Next Life, about the catastrophic dissolution of an Iraq veteran and everyone with whom he comes in contact... was a dour, doleful counterpoint to the triumphalist roar of the Veterans Day festivity." From November 17, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/17/v...
From November 3, 2015--almost exactly ten years ago, when the very active war-writing scene brought forth new books and authors and events and happenings almost every week. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/03/r...
Roy Scranton’s Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Bleakly Optimistic or Brightly Pessimistic?
Roy Scranton has consistently staked out positions or operated according to a vision that however murky or shocking at first look proved prescient in time. His editorial oversight (with Matt Gallag…
acolytesofwar.com
November 2, 2025 at 1:56 PM
From November 3, 2015--almost exactly ten years ago, when the very active war-writing scene brought forth new books and authors and events and happenings almost every week. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/03/r...