War Porn

Rates right up there with the best of them, any war, ant time, any place, anyone. It ended earlier than I expected. Quick. A stunning flash bang of a story, down to the bone

This is the first book I have read that tells the truth about Iraq and the continual war there and in Afghanistan.

Interesting read. A bit over the top in use of violence and indictment of U.S. military. Draws together themes that many Iraqis were unwittingly subjected to harsh life changing events and that many Americans have little understanding of the conflict in Iraq.

Hung up my Rolex Explorer and wear my Marina Militaire !

Big disappointment.

Roy Scranton’s first novel is an intense blend of storytelling and commentary reminiscent of post-Vietnam fiction. Sex, wartime violence, and torture are presented as adult themes. Consequences of brutality are integral to the portrayals of many characters. Devotees of anti-war literature will appreciate the presence of metaphors and symbolism.Dahlia and her friends are idealists with antiestablishment convictions that could be interpreted as youthful restiveness…or something else. They get together for what starts out to be a festive evening barbecue. Their guest is Matt, a National Guard soldier recently returned from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He shares “war porn” with his hosts while all of them talk. It’s a not-so-innocent gesture that allows the author to explore the deeper meaning of many sensitive subjects.For those who don’t know, “war porn” is a slang term intended to describe photographs and recorded video of actual combat that somebody looks at for what is said to be an unhealthy dose of amusement. People have been doing this sort of thing ever since cameras could be taken to a battlefield. Images of captive opponents or firefights may not be interesting to some, however; they can be quite fascinating to others. 21st Century social media and smart phones now make it very easy for anyone near violence or bad behavior to photograph what they see as it happens, uploading opinions and information to the internet almost immediately. Convenience and controversy with just one click.Like many writers before him, Roy borrowed from his own wartime experience to achieve authenticity. Using the technique of a long flashback through many chapters, he gives the reader a taste of the invasion as he interprets it. Combat is portrayed in a raw style intended to get your attention. Pointless situations that do read like something recalled from the confusion of Vietnam after 1968 are presented with what I took to be sarcasm. A wandering lens looks in to the lives of Iraqis in great detail with much sympathy to showcase their fears and frustrations.Parts of this story really can be taken at face value or and sifted for deeper meaning, as you see fit. Matt’s photos are the catalyst for the aforementioned flashback that allows Scranton to bring us his rendition of war—and—a carnal encounter with Dahlia that should be thought as more than it looks like. His decision to end his book with that moment says a lot about how they (Matt and Dahlia) value themselves and the lives of others. Are they so desensitized to violence that they [personally] have become selfish and uncaring? Or, is this meant to be the author’s indictment of society? No matter how you choose to consider these images, “War Porn” will be worth you time to read.

There has been a flood of books emerging from the current wars in the Mideast, yet Iraq war veteran Roy Scranton has managed to do something quite different with his debut novel, WAR PORN. The story moves back and forth from the home front to the war zone and back again, and also back and forth in time in the early years of the Iraq war. At home, in remote Moab, Utah, a group of friends gather for a back yard barbecue. One of them brings a date, Aaron Stojanowski, a National Guard MP, just back from a tour in Iraq where he worked at a prisoner detention center. The party hostess feels a magnetic attraction to this stranger, but a wide chasm between him and the others, all largely untouched by the war, becomes quickly and explosively apparent.Cut to Iraq, and a soldier named Wilson, a failed poet and drifter from Oregon who joined the army after 9/11. If there is a central character, he's it, as we learn of his pre-Army life in short flashbacks which serve to emphasize his 'different-ness' from his fellow enlistees. Profanity-laced GI talk, with its usual gallows humor, political incorrectness and irreverence abounds as Wilson goes about his daily duties, patrolling, pulling gate duty, transferring prisoners and more, counting down the days 'til his personal hell is over.And then, still in Iraq, we get a look at life on 'the other side,' as a timid Iraqi math professor and his extended family take center stage, first waiting for the American invasion, and then enduring it, caught up in a dark nightmarish madness and personal betrayals. This section alone sets WAR PORN apart to an extent, but it is not really new. This 'other side' viewpoint has already been used quite effectively in a few other novels: Helen Benedict's SAND QUEEN, Elliot Ackerman's GREEN ON BLUE, and, perhaps the best one of all, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's THE WATCH, with its elements of Greek tragedy.No, there are other things which make Scranton's story different. First. there are short seemingly nonsensical sections placed here and there throughout the narrative, each of them titled simply "Babylon," which confuse the reader and throw him off balance. Here's a sample -"population of two already pleaded to be those targets on the edge of the gallbladder and transverse colon; only those acts which can be said to be half measures, the national Kalashnikovs with a gunshot wound through the rectum; and two with possible war seen war that will be fourteen more casualties arrived OPERATION SIDEWINDER CIA secret prisons at the military's Iraqi Advanced Trauma Life Support protocols for the administration of Bush's decision was over the last six ..."Yes, shades of the mythical Tower of Babel, or perhaps the gobbledygook, or 'babble' you might have heard had you clicked quickly through the TV news channels in those early days of the war. Babylon was, after all, an early name for Iraq. The words of the fragmented reportage splatter the page like paint from a Pollock painting, but it works. Remember the conflicting reports, the half-truths, the 'spin,' the lies, the endless words, words, words ...That's one thing that makes WAR PORN different. The other is much darker: the meaning of the title itself - dark video images of casual killing, torture and the 'enhanced interrogation techniques' so graphically and minutely described in a recent Iraq memoir, Eric Fair's CONSEQUENCE. Scranton takes those images and literally rubs the reader's face in them in a stunningly horrific concluding sequence.WAR PORN is not an easy read. It will twist your gut and shock your sensibilities. You will come away shaken. And yet the war goes on and on. This is without a doubt an important contribution to the oeuvre of war lit. Very highly recommended.- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

Just finished this novel and highly recommend it.Shows first Iraq way from point of view of two different US soldiers and a young Iraqi maths professor and his family. Enlightening dialectical approach. Moving, horrific, educational. No preaching. A highly human story(ies) interwoven with bits of news reports and Bush's announcement of war watched on TV by family in Baghdad.Well crafted. Brilliant.

Superficially, Roy Scranton's "War Porn" is about a young man who ended up as a grunt in the Bush/Cheney war on Saddam Hussein in 2003 and 2004. Intertwined with that is a story of a group of self absorbed twenty-somethings doping and partying in a desultory way, ruminating about their futures, unaware that a guest in their midst will upend their lives.This Roy Scranton's debut novel, following his fascinating non-fiction "Learning to die in the Anthropocene". I strongly recommend reading both books, and reading up a little on Roy Scranton himself (good luck). He is young and will likely be around for a long time. I certainly hope so."War Porn" is written in an intense, granular, non-linear fashion and shifts its scenes back and forth in time. This you may find challenging. I did. Nevertheless it does have a discernible trajectory, which you will come to sense near the end. It is an end that is deeply shocking and disturbing, and yet enlightening. How so? Read and find out."War Porn" limns the heart of the nature of war: how it brings destruction on the bodies and souls of the attacked, and, more subtly, how it has a soul destroying blowback in the country of the attacker. I have been haunted by this book since I read it. I highly recommend it.

The writing quality was on par with fan fiction.