God and War Stories. Ep. 15

“I had at least thought there would be nobility in war. I know it
exists. There are so many stories, and some of them have to be
true. But I see mostly normal men, trying to do good, beaten down
by horror, by their inability to quell their own rages, by their
masculine posturing and their so-called hardness, their desire to
be tougher, and therefore crueler, than their circumstance. And
yet, I have this sense that this place is holier than back home.
Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where
we’re too lazy to see our own faults.” That’s just a sample of the
stinging and raw prose found in Phil Klay’s collection of short
stories, Redeployment. Klay, a veteran of the Iraq war and
recipient of the National Book Award, sat down with us to talk
about Memorial Day, why we find it diffi [...] Learn more about
your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices