The Art of War

[rich]

tangential to the above is a great memoir I read a few yrs back

http://www.amazon.com/My-War-Gone-Miss-So/dp/0140298541

My War Gone By, I Miss It So is a fiercely compelling and beautifully
written personal account of the Bosnian war. The book alternates
between Anthony Loyd's experiences in Bosnia and personal reflections
of his time in the British army, his parents' divorce, his
estrangement from his father, and his heroin addiction. Loyd describes
the war at eye level: detailing the way bodies look after they've been
shot or blown up, looking through the sights of a Muslim gun trained
on a Serb soldier, traveling with a French mercenary, and fleeing from
advancing Serbs during battle. The book is filled with firefights and
mutilated corpses and is not for the squeamish. Bosnia was "a
playground where the worst and most fantastic excesses of the human
mind were acted out." For Loyd, the high of battle substituted for the
high of heroin and vice versa: "I had come to Bosnia partially as an
adventure. But after a while I got into the infinite death trip. I was
not unhappy. Quite the opposite. I was delighted with most of what the
war had offered me: chicks, kicks, cash and chaos; teenage punk dreams
turned real and wreathed in gunsmoke."

Loyd's big break as a war correspondent came when another British
journalist was wounded. He had arrived in Bosnia a war junkie, just
trying to figure out what was going on and sell a few pictures to
newspapers on the side. "Journalism in itself had never really
interested me, I saw it only as a passport to war." He did not cover
the war like most other journalists--he went right into battles. Loyd
dismisses what other journalists did in Bosnia: staying at the Holiday
Inn in Sarajevo, driving out to the UN headquarters in an armored car,
and then returning to the relative safety of their hotel "to file
their heartfelt vitriol with scarcely a hair out of place." Loyd, who
did everything but carry a gun against the Serbs, scoffs at the idea
of journalistic objectivity. "What good did reporting ever do in
Bosnia anyway?" he sneers. In fact, he seems almost embarrassed not to
be fighting himself. "I felt I was a pornographer, a voyeur come to
watch." Lucky for the rest of us he did go to Bosnia. --Linda Killian
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this
title.

rich

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 7:48 AM,  <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
> Thanks.
>
> Interesting speech. I'd not heard Hedges speak
> before, but for some reason thought he was more
> feminine- weaker chin, higher voice. He comes
> across as fairly masculine, in a Robert
> Lowell/William Hurt kind of way.
>
> Couple-three takes on his speech, which was more
> or less a reading of a prepared text. It could have been,
> if it were less prepared, something from a "waraholics
> anonymous" meeting. Clearly, he was somewhat
> tortured. He kept his emotions barely beneath the
> surface.
>
> I couldn't help feeling, however, that he was still
> revelling a bit, by his own admission, in the ecstasy
> of war. He was still being the journo, to some extent,
> and looking for just the right way to encapsulate the
> experience for consumption, and not just for
> whatever compensation or fame his books generate,
> but for the hoped for effect on his audience. That is,
> there seemed to be a symmetry between the
> motivations that brought him into becoming a war
> correspondent and his addiction, and those that are
> currently stimulating him since his "long trip out."
> He is still struggling with his addiction, not just to war,
> but to idealism, and well constructed sentences in
> its service.
>
> That said, his descriptions of the drug-like effects
> of being in battle were compelling and accurate
> from a cognitive neuroscience point of view, and
> sounded just like those reported for any number
> of addictive drugs. By the end, I felt like asking
> him to step into the alley with me, and offer him a
> few good snorts...of oxytocin.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
> To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> Cc: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; Michael F <mff8785 at gmail.com>;
> pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Mon, Jan 10, 2011 7:24 pm
> Subject: Re: The Art of War
>
>
> A few days late, but a tremendous book well worth reading on this
> subject is Chris Hedges's War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.  In
> lieu of or addition to reading the book, you can watch Hedges speak at
> UCSB in 2004 here:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2SaM8RJ30c
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 7:47 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
> http://www.mtv.com/videos/the-vice-guide-to-everything-ep-4-the-business-of-war-sakawa-boys-bulletproof-tailor-norwegian-black-metal/1654484/playlist.jhtml
>>
>> The Business of War
>>
>
>
>
>