Phil Klay’s Desployment:

Redployment by Phil Klay

Redeployment, by Phil Klay, is Klay’s first published collection of stories. Klay is a  former Marine, who served in Iraq as a pubic affairs officer. He did not see combat, though his protagonist in this story did. Klay’s two brothers were also in the military at the same time. Klay graduated from Dartmouth and has an MFA from Hunter College.

What struck me about this story is that it is written so vividly in the first person, and though there are plenty of scenes and dialogue, it is mostly a monologue. I imagined the narrator, sitting on a stool on a stage, telling us the story of how he returned from war, with flashbacks to what happened while he was over there, and how he felt upon his return.

Like all great stories, this one is about a hero going on a journey---a journey into war, and then the journey home to rejoin his wife. There is a whiff of the Odyssey here. He survived death; now, how will he experience life? 

SPOILER ALERT: He does it by shopping with his wife and killing his dog. In some ways, writing a story about war is tough---the reader expects to be moved, shocked and possibly devastated by the end of the story. If the writer does not deliver these feelings, the reader is disappointed. Most of us have never been to war: We want the writer to tell us what it is like, gives us some insight into its atrocities. The bar is high for war writers. But writing about war can also be a clever, easy and efficient way to tackle those most profound of subjects: Life and death. If you or anyone you know has experience with war, I suggest you write about the experience and/or interview the person with the experience and write about it.

Klay assumes that you know the vocabulary of war, and that if you don’t, that you will either look up the definitions you don’t know, or you will glide through the story, ignorant of what some of the writer is referring to. You don’t necessarily need to know what a DI (defense intelligence), IED (improvised explosive device) or XO (executive officer) are in order to enjoy the story, though you will get more out of it if you do know what these terms mean. This raises a question I’m frequently asked in class: Is it okay to use vocabulary that will be unfamiliar to your readers? And if you’re going to do that, should you include a glossary? My preference is to include a glossary at the end of the story or to at least define the word or the acronym the first time you use it so that your lazier writer isn’t struggling to understand what you’re writing about and possibly abandoning the story in frustration and ignorance.

How the story does its work of moving the reader: The author deftly weaves fear into this story, so that you, the reader, are constantly on edge, wondering if the narrator and/or his friends are going to get killed. This is a clever writing device: Make the reader worry for your protagonist. Put the reader in your protagonist’s shoes. And use the second person. For instance, on pages 2, Klay writes, “You try to think about home, then you’re in the torture house. You see the body parts in the locker and the retarded guy in the cage. He squawked like a chicken. His head was shrunk down to a coconut. It takes you a while to remember Doc saying they’d shot mercury into his skull…You see the little girl, the photographs Curtis found in a desk….”  By the bottom of page 2, we are filled with dread at what the protagonist is going to find and describe next. Dread is a powerful feeling. In fact, your readers want to feel dread, just as theater and movie-goers want to feel fear when they go to the theater. Later, they want to feel the release of it, but first, they want to feel it in full. Don’t be afraid to scare your reader.

Dog as a character (SPOILER ALERT): Notice how much the narrator loves his dog (p.3) and how that dog becomes a character. The story opens and ends with the killing of the dog (pp. 1 and 16). There’s a neat and gruesome symmetry here. The narrator’s dog is a vulnerable, old creature. The narrator is attached to him, as we become attached to him, and when the narrator shoots him at the end, we feel his loss. Don’t be afraid of killing off characters in your fiction. Your reader wants to feel this loss and grieve this character’s absence.

Gun and hands as characters: The narrator is attached to his gun (p.6.) Can a gun be a character? Sure. Klay writes: “When I got to the window and handed in my rifle, though, it brought me up short. That was the first time I’d been separated from it in months. I didn’t know where to rest my hands. First I put them in my pockets, then I took them out and crossed my arms, and then I just let them hang, useless, at my sides.” Elevates objects---hands, guns—so that your reader sees and feels them and imagines using them in his/her mind.

The use of vice: The story starts off with the introduction of vices: The murder of a dog, jerking off in a shower, card-playing and smoking cigarettes. Readers love to read about vices---smoking, drinking, gambling,s ex play, etc. This immediately raises the stakes for the characters, takes the reader to a place s/he doesn’t normally go to but wants to experience. When characters are put at risk, the readers ask: Will the protagonist be okay? We want that uncertainty, we want to wonder what is going to happen to the characters, we want to be caught up in the question: Will s/he die?

Some of the characters get drunk on page 4. Same idea here: Readers love to read about characters getting drunk, high, stealing, lying, pretending, falling in love with inappropriate people, cheating on people they love, and doing all sorts of deviant activities. We love to be experience high’s and low’s in fiction, high’s and low’s we probably avoid or repress in real life. But fiction is not real life. Fiction is where your reader goes to feel and experience the things s/he avoids in real life. Don’t be afraid to have your characters do crazy, dark, risky, destructive and self-destructive things in your stories.

Did Klay’s title story move you? Did it make you want to read more of the collection? What about it, if anything, made it memorable? Did it make you want to write?

Exercise: Write a scene for one of your characters in which s/he does exactly the opposite thing sh/e should do.