A friend of mine came to town last weekend and it was decided that first night that we would spend the day in Powell's Bookstore on Burnside. I had two boxes of books to sell and $50 worth of gift cards to use. I was ecstatic. I hadn't been to Powell's in a long time.
Well, this same friend of mine had recently written a series of stories that had to do with war. She had read a bunch of material on the places, on the military, etc, in order to make her stories more believable. I liked this idea. I've slowly been working on a novel about a Marine, and I've always felt inadequately prepared for this task. I don't know the first thing about the Marines, so what makes me think I could possibly be qualified to write about one? The short answer is, "I don't know." The longer answer is that my character, John, is a Marine. I can't do anything about that. It's who he is. Okay, so I'm getting off track. The point of the matter is that I needed to do more research.
I found myself in the "War" section of Powell's browsing through the "Gulf War" shelves. These shelves cover all the wars fought in the area. I was able to find a ton of material on our current war, but there was very little covering Desert Shield and Desert Storm (which is when John would have served). I found three books that I think will prove useful. The first is titled "How to Defeat Saddam Hussein: Scenarios and Strategies for the Gulf War" by Col. Trevor N. Dupuy, U.S. Army (Ret.). It has a banner across the top of the book that reads "As Featured on CNN". It moves through all kinds of strategies and options for the war. I'll use it to get an idea of how they thought about the situation strategically.
The other is called "Desert Warrior" by Richard Kay. It's a reporter's first person account of time spent with the 4th Armoured Brigade. It's a British book which might add a different angle on the whole affair, but it is in first person and should give me some necessary voices for working in such foreign terrain.
The final book is "Jarhead" by Anthony Swofford. It was turned into a movie recently, but I haven't seen it yet. I'm about a quarter of the way through it right now and I already have two scenes that have been loosely inspired by Swofford's work. It too is a first person account of the war, the fallout afterward and the run up to his time in the military. It's nice to have because it gives me the broader perspective of a single solider, instead of only focusing on his time in Saudi Arabia. The language is tight and specific and will help me get a sense of the cadence, abbreviations, and jargon used at that time.
I remember a craft talk given by David Long when I was a graduate student. It was on reading and the influence it has on writing. I remember David making reference to the old saying You are what you eat and then putting his own spin on it. I believe he said, "Remember. You are what you read, but you are also what you don't read." It was a lesson in searching, reaching, getting outside the box of canonical, contemporary literature. He was asking us to push a little outside ourselves to find books and inspiration where we might not expect it. I never thought I would find myself in the "War" section of Powell's, but it was one of the most natural and beneficial journeys I've made in a bookstore in a really long time.
SO glad it's doing the trick, Kyle. War reading sure helped me out last year, no doubt. I remember that talk by David. I think he said something like "You are responsible for what you don't read." Intense!
ReplyDeleteAh, you were in my section of Powells! There was a time I never could have envisioned the amount of time I'd spend in both the Civil War/current conflict sections there, but now I find myself drawn to them as much as any other, not just for the writing research. It gets to you, man.
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