I expect those conversations would be more exclusively about the novel at hand, and that biographical details would emerge in a secondary fashion, if at all. Price I find myself compelled to acknowledge and even show admiration for the choices you made with your life, in a way I probably would not if speaking to other contemporary novelists-like, say, Jesse Ball, or Claire Vaye Watkins, or Alexandra Kleeman, though each is immensely talented.
Gallagher thought about grad school too-it just took him a few extra years to get there. (One of the sites where George Washington organized his soldiers for flight from the fast-arriving Brits at an early stage of the Revolutionary War.) In person, Gallagher is animated and engaging, with something of the eternal teen in his enthusiasm-which is all belied by an overarching seriousness that might have something to do with his having commanded fellow soldiers at an age when the vast majority of his compatriots were either throwing themselves headlong into narrow, thankless jobs or considering grad school.
I had the pleasure of meeting Gallagher a few years ago, among other writers following the annual Veteran’s Day reading at the Old Stone House in Park Slope. And when they get confused or angry, I’ll smile.
It’s a messy journey that is less one of escalating drama than of steady attrition, and if the narrative edges don’t quite meet in places, Gallagher (as Porter) warns us of as much in the novel’s preface: “I’ll answer crooked, and I’ll answer long. Among Youngblood’s wide-ranging cast of characters, Porter must negotiate his way through a gung-ho sergeant, an unreasonable chain-of-command, a Suzanne Somers-enthralled sheik, a cool-as-a-cucumber interpreter, a local boy incensed by the loss of his pet goat, and a bereaved Iraqi mother who longs for life in the Western world. The novel is unique among modern war literature I’ve read for delivering a more pointillist, day-to-day vision of what it’s like to be an occupier of another country, even when you are well aware of the absurdities that go with that less-than-desirable role. Predictably, those objectives do not always align so well, with fealty to one sometimes pulling him afoul of another. Jack Porter as he seeks to abide by orders, take care of his men, and do all that he possibly can to maintain a fragile peace in the region. Lest that sound too macro an account, it’s really a narrative about people-those encountered on a daily basis by Lt. Youngblood, Matt Gallagher’s debut novel, is a story of the American occupation set in an isolated Iraqi town where violence has flared, settled, and may be poised to flare again.
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