Posted on Sat, Jul. 19, 2008 10:15 PM
HBO’s “Generation Kill” stays true to its source and its subjects
But in Evan Wright’s mesmerizing book Generation Kill — and the faithful adaptation of it currently airing on HBO — the war plays out more like Hannibal’s army on elephants: slower, dustier and a whole lot bloodier than what we saw on the news.
On assignment for Rolling Stone, Wright was an embedded reporter with the Marines of Bravo Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, who acted as the “spear tip” of the invasion. Severing all contact with the outside world, Wright joined the fewer than 400 men who lumbered northward in aging Humvees toward the Iraqi capital, often ahead of all other U.S. forces, taking on and returning enemy fire through 16 firefights.
Despite the constant peril — the chilling ambush that opens the book would prove typical — Wright stayed embedded and won the Marines’ trust. He kept copious notes, in pen. When there was a break in the action, he would interview others, triangulating their recollections to create vivid and accurate accounts of what they were going through.
The first Marine he bonded with was Lt. Nathaniel Fick, the platoon’s Dartmouth-educated commander. Wright had studied medieval history, and Fick, who was interested in antiquity, would soon become Virgil to his Dante, guiding the author through the rings of Hell en route to Baghdad.
“Every time (the convoy stopped), I would get out and go to Fick and say, ‘What happened?’ ” Wright says. “As a result, my book is written with an artificial omniscience.”
Wright says Fick made one request of him, and it’s a line heard in tonight’s episode of “Generation Kill”: Turning to the reporter (played by Lee Tergesen), Fick (Stark Sands) says simply, “Write this as you see it.”
The author wrote down what he heard as well, and these conversations among the men of Bravo Company are what endear them to the reader. Postmodern accounts of war, like the novel The Farther Shore by Kansas Citian Matthew Eck, plunge the reader into the disorienting fog of war.
Wright, by contrast, calls attention to the community formed by the Marines of Bravo Company, primarily through storytelling and shared experience. The fog, or dust cloud, is still there, but it often seems unimportant to these expertly trained killers, who pride themselves on being utterly prepared for anything.
When Wright got home, he transcribed 1,000 pages of material from his notes and wrote “The Killer Elite,” a three-part series for the magazine. Empathy combined with hard work and the luxury of magazine deadlines resulted in an instant classic of war journalism.
“Not only did he have the time to construct a coherent and almost artistic narrative,” an admiring reviewer later wrote, “but also he was writing for a publication willing to print the unexpurgated musings of the Marines. Wright could include the homoerotic joking, their violent fantasies and even their discussions of bowel movements.”
“The Killer Elite” was optioned by HBO, which also bought the rights to Wright’s book-length version. Yet it would be two years before the story of this new band of brothers would find its way into the hands of producers who were ideally suited — perhaps even predestined — to bring it to the small screen.
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