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TimeNowEncore

@petermolin.bsky.social

21 followers 1 following 150 posts

Links to all TIme Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature posts in chronological order from 2012-2024.

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TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 17h

Haha, good one!

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 17h

The snark quotient on this post is pretty high, and I think some got the message that I wasn't as kindly-disposed to "any ol' vet-writing just because it was vet-writing" as they might have thought or hoped. Kudos to all who break the mold, or who do it well.

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 17h

"...a smart young writer-buck might pack all 20 of the motifs I’ve named into one super-story that then becomes more popular than American Sniper..." From June 11, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/06/11/b...

Been There, Done That: Contemporary War Writing Stock Scenes

For all those contemplating or currently writing memoir, fiction, or poetry about war in Iraq or Afghanistan and its aftermath, I’ve listed twenty events or ways of describing events that I’ve enco…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 1d

"Hamilton ... eschews portraits of troops and battle and instead offers a compelling story about how war ensnares a wide range of characters other than those in uniform." From June 5, 2015. ://acolytesofwar.com/2015/06/05/masha-hamiltons-what-changes-everything/

Masha Hamilton’s What Changes Everything

The plot of Masha Hamilton’s novel What Changes Everything contains many threads, the most important being the kidnapping of Todd Barbery, the head of a refugee relief organization in Afghanistan, …

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 2d

"The ASO, for example, writing of the junior enlisted faction of the military known as “E4s,” who tend to be the most reliable indicator of unit morale, writes, 'if there actually was an E-4 Mafia, Colby Buzzell would be the godfather.'” From May 31, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/31/c...

Colby Buzzell’s Thank You For Being Expendable

My review of Colby Buzzell’s latest essay and magazine article collection Thank You for Being Expendable is up at The Bridge, a website dedicated to “Policy, Strategy, National Security, and Milita…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 3d

"Some are by veterans, one is by a non-veteran author, and the rest are by critics and book-reviewers, but all in my mind are major statements in regard to the imaginative literature written by Americans about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." From May 27, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/27/a...

A Golden Age of War Writing? A Critical Companion to Contemporary War Lit

Below are ten articles on contemporary war literature published in reputable mainstream press venues in the last two years. Some are by veterans, one is by a non-veteran author of fiction, and the …

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 4d

"On the right in the photograph is Captain David Taylor, one of my lieutenants when I commanded a company in the 82nd Airborne Division. In the picture, taken in 2001, he’s standing on a hill outside Gnjilane, Kosovo..." Photo by Bill Putnam. May 25, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/25/m...

Memorial Day 2015

Memorial Day is the quietest of national holidays and probably should be even quieter still. It’s hard to say anything in honor of fallen soldiers, Marines, airmen, and sailors that isn’t inadequat…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 5d

"Every woman we saw on the roads of Khost province wore blue burqas that covered them from head-to-toe. When we passed them in our trucks, they would turn away from us and hunch down in a ball until we passed." From May 17, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/17/i...

Iraq and Afghan Women in War and War Fiction

My post last week about poetry written by Afghan women prompted one reader to ask me about fictional portraits of Afghan and Iraqi women and another to ask me about my own experiences with Afghan w…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 6d

"The Afghan poets who participate in AWWP do so at great risk—the hardship and danger of writing publicly, especially for Western audiences, is writ large in many Washing the Dust from Our Hearts poems." May 6, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/06/t...

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project

Washing the Dust from Our Hearts: Poetry and Prose from Writers of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project is, as far as I can tell, the second volume published by the organization named in its title. T…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 8d

"But a mark of Goolsby’s skill is that he refuses to blame military service or war single-mindedly on the troubles that befall Wintric, Torres, and Big Dax. Those things are catalysts, certainly, but it’s more than that." From April 23, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/23/t...

The Long War Forever: Jesse Goolsby’s I’d Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them

I’d Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them, Jesse Goolsby’s soon-to-be-released novel about three US Army male soldiers bound by shared horrific experience in Afghanistan, offers plenty of reaso…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 10d

"Taking matters into his own hands, Benjamin Busch recruited an all-star line-up of war authors—Schultz, Fallon, Brian Turner, and Phil Klay—for a panel titled “Telling Our New War Stories: Witness and Imagination across Literary Genres.” From April 18, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/18/m...

Minnesota Turn-and-Burn: War Writing at AWP15

A “turn-and-burn” military convoy travels from one base to another, executes its business quickly, and then immediately returns home; the mission doesn’t allow for socializing or enjoying the desti…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 10d

"This year’s event was hosted by Kaboom author and Words After War mainstay Matt Gallagher, who had many nice things to say about me and my fellow readers Paul Wolfe, Teresa Fazio, and Brandon Willitts." From April 12, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/12/t...

The Ever-Changing War Lit Scene

Two weeks ago I was invited to read fiction on stage in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, bar called Pete’s Candy Store. Pete’s often hosts readings, but only once a year dedicates a night to veteran writi…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 12d

"Specifically, Masmoudi examined representations in recent Iraqi fiction of American “camps,” or what we call more often a FOB: armed enclaves of foreigners that spread parasite-like across the country in the 2000s after the American invasion." From April 4, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/04/c...

Comp Lit, ComiCon, and Contemporary Iraqi War Fiction

At the American Comparative Literature Conference last week in Seattle, I participated in a seminar titled “What Does War Look Like? Visual Trauma and Representation.” Organized by Brenda Sanfilipp…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 12d

"Words After War—a New York City literary organization notable for its rapid rise to prominence, built on a sensibility deeply connected to its New York City location and an expanded sense of what a community writing group might do and be." From April 3, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/03/s...

Sailing the 4Cs: Veteran Literary Organizations and the Composition Classroom

The Conference on College Composition and Communication is a big deal for English 101 teachers. Imagine 10,000 strong of us—for I am one—descending on a town near you and geeking out to presentatio…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 13d

"I’m moderating a panel titled 'Who Can’t Handle the Truth? Memoirs by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans' that features Ron Capps, Kayla Williams, and Colin D. Halloran." From March 25, 2015. //acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/25/time-now-live-and-coming-to-a-town-near-you/

Time Now Live and Coming to a Town Near You

Last week I presented twice at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Tampa, Florida. One presentation was part of a panel called Community Writing Programs for Veterans; my con…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 14d

"Appreciation Yak: Only thing I like about Fayetteville is all the eye candy. Military men are the best men. I’m in heaven every time I come home from school." March 14, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/14/a...

A Yik Yak Prose-Poem, Found Near Fayetteville, NC, Outside Fort Bragg, Home of the 82nd Airborne Division

First Yak: Appreciation Yak: Only thing I like about Fayetteville is all the eye candy. Military men are the best men. I’m in heaven every time I come home from school. Subsequent Yaks: I’m the opp…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 15d

"Through the audacity of its imaginative reach, as well as the acuity of its insight into what war in Afghanistan is about, Green on Blue significantly expands the borders of contemporary war literature." From March 10, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/10/t...

The Wild, Wild East: Elliot Ackerman’s Green on Blue

USMC veteran Elliot Ackerman’s novel Green on Blue describes events that ring true to my own deployment experience in east Afghanistan. As an advisor who daily spent hours in the company of Afghans…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 16d

"The mortar and ghost scenes showed Decaul the master of two trains of stagecraft—representational fidelity to real life heightened aesthetically and the magical permutation of real life in the pursuit of greater artistic truth." From March 1, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/01/h...

How We Were: Maurice Decaul’s Stage Vision of Iraq, 2003

Sitting in the audience before Poetic Theater’s production of playwright Maurice Decaul’s Dijla Wal Furat: Between the Tigris and the Euphrates, I mused that the last year or so has not brought man…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 17d

"His portrait of the Koran-saturated belief systems and ways of life of contemporary Pakistanis is a badly-needed detailed representation of a world Americans basically spent a decade fighting without knowing much about." From Feb 20, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/20/l...

Life During Wartime, On the Other Side: Nadeem Aslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden

Ex-Marine Elliott Ackerman’s novel Green on Blue is out this week and I’m eager to read it. Green on Blue’s point-of-view—it’s told through the eyes of an Afghan young man who serves in a native mi…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 18d

I loved writing posts about music; I'm as much a frustrated rock critic as anything else!

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 18d

Here's another post where I explored GWOT soldiers' search for new sounds and voices, rather than the rock classics (though we listened to plenty of them, too): acolytesofwar.com/2013/06/29/w...

War Songs: Daniel Somers

While researching music made by service members in Iraq and Afghanistan and veterans upon their return, I learned of the death by suicide two weeks ago of Daniel Somers. Somers was an Army intellig…

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 18d

"As a recently retired faculty member at West Point... I can attest to Samet's commitment to using her course as a laboratory for change on behalf of an Army otherwise capable of only clunky efforts at self-critique and transformation." From Feb 14, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/14/n...

Never Trust an Officer Over 30? Elizabeth Samet’s No Man’s Land

In No Man’s Land, Elizabeth Samet attempts to construct, or re-construct, a personal narrative that makes sense of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, particularly as they have colored her relationship …

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 19d

"All of which is funny, because music remains vitally important in the lived lives of soldiers at war. Every soldier since 2001 I’m thinking has gone to war with a playback device full of songs and their heads full of many more." From Feb 7, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/07/w...

Where Have All The War Songs Gone?

Literary historians tell us that during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II odes, ballads, and other popular and folk forms of expression related to the wars often appeared in newspapers, …

acolytesofwar.com

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 20d

The photograph by my friend Bill Putnam wonderfully enhances the discussion of whether American soldiers (or the American soldiers portrayed in GWOT fiction) are "trauma heroes."

TimeNowEncore @petermolin.bsky.social · 20d

"Some of us like Scranton all the more for who he is, but, skipping past inside-war-writer-circle dramatics, what about the charges Scranton levies against war narrative?" From Feb 1, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/01/r...

Roy Scranton, Phil Klay, and the American Trauma Hero

Roy Scranton set the war writer community abuzz this week when the Los Angeles Review of Books published his essay “The Trauma Hero: From Wilfred Owen to “Redeployment” to Americ…

acolytesofwar.com