Book #36

Sunrise over Fallujah
by Walter Dean Myers

Got a little more homework; this time I got to pick my book, and oh man, did I ever pick wrong.

Sunrise over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers

How far should one go, to offer the benefit of the doubt? At what point does that generosity, that trust in another's basic capability despite evidence to the contrary, become a sign of foolishness on the part of the giver, the one offering the trust? When does trust become a mistake?

I want to offer Walter Dean Myers the benefit of the doubt. The man has won multiple awards, writing successful and beloved young adult fiction for better than three decades; I want to believe that his most recent novel, Sunrise over Fallujah, is actually more than what it seems. I want to believe that it is a poignant depiction of the meaninglessness of war, that it is an attempt to show, through a realistic account of the experiences and interactions of a confused and shallow group of young soldiers during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that the men and women of the US military are brave but gullible, and have been deceived, as has the nation, by an avaricious and intemperate leadership. I want to think that the book is intentionally bad, so that it could make an elegantly subtle point about a bad war fought for bad reasons by generally good people. I want to believe that, but I think if I did, it would cross the line into foolishness.

No, sadly, I think this is just a bad book. I think Mr. Myers, who has two children in the US military, wanted to show that American soldiers truly are heroes despite the fact that so little has been actually achieved in this pointless Rube Goldberg-meets-Machiavelli debacle that has sapped our nation's strength, and he couldn't do it. I think he wanted to make these soldiers seem to be doing the right thing, but since the reality -- which he certainly has an intimate awareness of; I have no doubt that this novel is realistic in its broad strokes and in its military aspects -- is just the opposite, he was forced to bend over too far backwards, and the work suffered for it. He went too far in giving the US military the benefit of the doubt, in other words. And here's what happened.

The soldiers never actually do anything of import; there is no clear plan of attack, no apparent goals, and only the briefest nod toward a larger meaning to their actions. The characters comprise a Civil Affairs unit, soldiers whose mission is to win the "hearts and minds" of the conquered Iraqis; thus they are not generally involved in combat, but are supposed to make connections, to show the Iraqi people the human face of the US military. However, since the novel was set (rather short-sightedly, I think) during the actual invasion and subjugation of Iraq in the spring of 2003, there was really very little this unit could be shown doing in pursuit of their mission; thus the characters are forced to observe that they are being ill-used by their commanders, as this non-aggressive unit is asked, again and again, to take part in actual combat situations. When they are not involved in these, or in rather pointless attempts to win hearts and minds (a phrase that is grotesquely overused in the novel, and which I want to believe was intended sardonically, but don't, as it wasn't) that cannot escape the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- if these American soldiers are playing soccer with villagers, while those American soldiers are slaughtering Iraqis with airstrikes a few hundred miles away, could there really be any progress toward trust and goodwill? -- the characters are forced to spend much of their time watching television or puttering around the base. The characters are sadly one-dimensional, and often confusing; Mr. Myers was limited by his obvious pro-military bias, and his attempts to keep the book clean for young adult consumption, and so none of the soldiers are particularly violent or aggressive or hateful towards either the Iraqis or their commanders, and none of them curse or drink or smoke or leer after women. These, then, are not like any soldiers I have ever known or read about. Worst of all, the book was simply boring to read: the characters are dull and unbelievable, the action is too quick and sporadic, the intended symbolism is both too vague and too heavy-handed to make any meaningful points. Even the writing is poor: the dialogue sounds like an over-the-hill hack trying to sound young and hip for the WB, with occasional uses of slang such as "gangsta lean" and the ubiquitous interjection "yo," but the jokes aren't funny, the conversations are stilted, unrealistic, and overly abrupt, and the inner thoughts of the narrator are as confused as the author obviously was, trying to make a bad war sound like a good one, trying to make a foolish young man sound wise, trying to make a confused and chaotic situation sound controlled and meaningful.

It just can't be done. Mr. Myers shouldn't have tried. F.