Books in BriefUnbowed by Wangari Maathai Savage Kingdom The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America by Benjamin Woolley Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet The Happiest Man in the World: An account of the life of Poppa Neutrino by Alec Wilkinson Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America by Johnny Rico Last Flag Down by John Baldwin & Ron Powers Crazy ‘08 How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait Murphy |
Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green:A Year in the Desert with Team Americaby Johnny Rico Reviewed by Michelle Theriault The first thing to know about the author of the war memoir Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America is that “Johnny Rico” is not his given name. He was born as Stephen Hites, but at 21 legally changed his name in homage to the character in Robert Heinlein’s 1950’s sci-fi book Starship Troopers, a character who joins the military on a lark. When the story begins, Rico is in the throes of a modern crisis of young adulthood. He has experimented with seemingly promising paths to fulfillment (graduate degrees, backpacking) but it all leaves him empty, feeling stuck in a Denver cubicle. Then comes 9/11. Rico is honest enough to write that he remembers that September morning as awful, but also “exciting.” A new historical moment has presented itself, and Rico does what Hemingway would do: He joins the infantry as a rank-and-file grunt. Upon arrival in Afghanistan, Rico is dismayed to find that his deployment resembles an interminable, dangerous summer camp run by Kafka. Masturbation, computer solitaire and Chevy Chase movies pass the time. He worries he’ll come home without getting shot at. Will his time at war be yet another fruitless search for authenticity and good bar stories? Rico’s writing can be plodding and overwrought, and some of his revelations about military life are not terribly novel (things could be done more efficiently; there are bigots and idiots among the ranks, some of whom are in charge of rather important operations.) It is something else that sets the book apart: Rico is jarringly candid about what he has gone to war to find. In the soft muddle of young adulthood, war offers clarity. As one soldier tells Rico, being deployed “was the happiest I’ve been in ten years, man. I truly laughed. Emotions over there were real. I was sober. Getting shot at was the best.” In the end, Rico’s fear of an uneventful deployment is unfounded. He sees more of war than even he bargained for and comes home with the stories he hoped for: enough, even, to fill a book. |