Read This: Brute
Lt. General Victor “Brute” Krulak is credited, in Robert Coram’s Brute with a crucial role in developing the amphibious landing vehicles that helped the United States Marine Corps push their way through the Pacific theater of operations during the Second World War, and with developing a strategy for counterinsurgent tactics which, had it actually been used during the Vietnam War, might have led to a different outcome. Coram also honors Krulak for his work in making sure that the other branches of the American military, jealous of the Marines’ success and their prestige, did not succeed in decimating the Corps in the 1940s and 1950s. (Even Truman and Eisenhower resented the Marines and tried to massively reduce their fighting power.) And, after the scandalous death of several recruits during a late-night march through a swamp led by a drunken drill instructor, Krulak overhauled the basic training program, essentially creating the boot camp experience that both my parents (you read that right) went through when they enlisted in the 1960s. So there’s definitely some level of personal interest in Krulak’s story on my part.
That said, Brute is the sort of book I’d recommend more for the story it tells than for the quality of the telling. Coram does a respectably solid job of explaining Krulak’s profound significance to the modern Marine Corps, not just in combat operations from Okinawa to Vietnam but in the bureaucratic battles between the wars, but he tends to push his inferences about Krulak’s character, such as a deliberate suppression of his Jewish background, a bit harder than I’m comfortable with (although, honestly, that’s just about where Coram and I would draw the line between speculating as to Krulak’s motives and flat-out insisting upon them). And while I consider myself pretty gung-ho where the Corps is concerned, even I think Coram lays the mystique on a little thick, setting out lines like “another piece of barren soil soaked by Marine blood, fertilized by Marine grief, and consecrated by Marine valor” (his description of Khe Sanh) with some frequency. Still, there is plenty of interesting material here, including some preliminary gestures towards a revisionist approach towards Vietnam-era history (which could actually be a fertile field for research by younger scholars whose attitudes weren’t formed in the crucible of the boomers’ cultural conflict). On the whole, I’d have to agree with Dwight Garner, who’s also reviewing Brute today: Coram’s account of Krulak’s life and legacy is “at times ragged and hectoring, but always plainspoken and absorbing.”
10 November 2010 | read this |
Read This: Machine of Death
I love a good success story, and the self-published short story collection Machine of Death has a doozy: “When we picked a release date, we tried to aim for a day far from other major book releases—why invite more competition than we needed to?”the editors report. “Unfortunately we don’t know anything about publishing, and so missed the fact that a number of high-profile books also had official release dates of October 26.” Those included a new novel from John Grisham, Keith Richards’ memoir, and the new book from Glenn Beck. And, thanks to a highly effective online campaign in which those editors—Ryan North, David Malki, and Matthew Bennardo—reached out to their fans and asked them to buy the book on Amazon on its release date, they managed to become the #1 bestselling book at the site that day. That made Beck nuts enough to whine about how he’d been squeezed out of the championship that was his birthright by some left-wing culture of death. So, naturally, I ordered my own copy.
And now, the real question is: Is Machine of Death any good? I’m about a third of the way through, and I can tell you that I’m happily impressed. The premise is simple: There’s a machine that will tell you how (but not when) you are going to die, but the messages are not always straightforward: “Suicide,” for example, may not refer to your own attempts at self-annihilation. Each of the stories is titled with a death prediction; one of my favorite so far is “Torn Apart and Devoured by Lions,” in which Jeffrey C. Wells describes the enthusiasm with which an insurance salesman embraces his fate because, hey, it means he’s not going to be stuck in this cubicle for the rest of his life. (But there are also some seriously bleak tales here, like Bennardo’s “Starvation,” and more quietly disturbing stories like J. Jack Unrau’s “Firing Squad.”) I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book whenever I can steal time away for a story or two, but based just on my initial impressions, these guys totally deserve all the success they’ve gotten and (if the momentum holds) will continue to enjoy.
9 November 2010 | read this |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
