{"id":3341,"date":"2010-02-17T05:11:38","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T05:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2010-02-17T05:12:42","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T05:12:42","slug":"senators-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3341","title":{"rendered":"Senator’s Son"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"larson.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Senator’s Son: An Iraq War Novel<\/strong><\/a><\/strong>\u00a0 by Luke S. Larson<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Just received a review copy of new author Luke Larson’s<\/strong> novel Senator’s Son<\/strong>. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of works of fiction that I have reviewed at ZP<\/strong>, but two things caught my attention about Senator’s Son:<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, the novel is historical realism with a theme of COIN<\/strong>. Secondly, the author Luke Larson is a decorated Marine officer with two tours in Iraq<\/strong> under his belt. Flipping the pages reveals a gritty, sometimes humorous, staccato\u00a0writing style and military\/strategy\/policy issues that are discussed here, or at SWJ<\/strong> <\/a>or Abu Muqawama<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0come to life\u00a0through the eyes of still learning practitioners. I’m looking forward to reading\u00a0Senator’s Son<\/strong>\u00a0and reviewing it in full in late February or early March (\u00a0need to finish Carr’s<\/strong>\u00a0Inside Cyber Warfare<\/strong> <\/a>first).<\/p>\n

Setting aside the book itself, something else occurred to me –\u00a0that we have reached the point where\u00a0the war is now appearing not as news, but as literature; Iraq and Afghanistan<\/strong> are proving to be culturally transformative wars for America in ways that the Gulf War<\/strong> or the Korean War<\/strong> were not.<\/p>\n

If you consider WWI<\/strong>,\u00a0the Great War<\/strong> represented an\u00a0existential crisis for Western Civilization that found expression in the Lost Generation and, in Germany, the polar opposite novels All Quiet on the Western Front<\/strong> <\/a>and Storm of Steel<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0as well as Hemingway’s<\/strong> A Farewell to Arms<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0The Spanish Civil War<\/strong> electrified international opinion, foreshadowing as it did the ideological death-match of the 20th century, and yielded Orwell’s<\/strong>\u00a0Homage to Catalonia<\/a><\/strong>. WWII<\/strong> and the Vietnam War<\/strong> have generated an ocean of histories down to the minutest detail, as well as their share of novels, short stories and movies. It is noteworthy, that most of the time, literature and history followed the conclusion of peace, be it in victory or defeat.<\/p>\n

In our time, the books on the war in Iraq, or Afghanistan or against terrorism are arriving while the conflict is still\u00a0in full throttle, in time to shape the perceptions of policymakers and the public to an unprecedented extent. Something is happening out there, an inchoate need for answers or reassurance that writers are attempting to answer. Most of these books so far\u00a0have been non-fiction, journalistic instant histories salted with examples of policy analysis and war memoirs.<\/p>\n

Senator’s Son<\/strong> marks a new\u00a0turn toward\u00a0a wave\u00a0of fiction addressing the crucible of America’s current\u00a0wars. Literature can shape a nation’s\u00a0psyche more profoundly than even the most soberly researched work of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senator’s Son: An Iraq War Novel\u00a0 by Luke S. Larson Just received a review copy of new author Luke Larson’s novel Senator’s Son. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of works of fiction that I have reviewed at ZP, but two things caught my attention about Senator’s Son: First, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,262,361,420,133,20,126,471,215,444,51,78,199,336,45,499,43,39,372,562,436,445,381,312,426,18,217,557],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-4gw","category-america","category-authors","category-book","category-coin","category-counterinsurgency","category-cultural-intelligence","category-culture","category-fiction","category-history","category-ideas","category-insurgency","category-intellectuals","category-iraq","category-islamic-world","category-mideast","category-military","category-non-state-actors","category-perception","category-psychology","category-reading","category-society","category-tribes","category-veterans","category-war","category-warriors","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}