War, love, and fiction …

… Bryan Appleyard — Blog Archive — New Fiction for New Wars. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A group of “heroes” has been brought home from Iraq for a kind of victory tour. They are confronted with rabid belli­cosity, a deranged patriotism. At one point, some too-dumb-to-live footballers ask the poor grunts if they can come out and kill a few ­Muslims — they wouldn’t need paying. “People accused me of exaggerating,” Fountain says, “but I don’t think so.”

Color me skeptical. Not thinking that you're exaggerating means you didn't go to the trouble of making sure that you weren't.