The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
In War Porn, Mr. Scranton has tried to broaden his novel's scope by telling three separate tales that illuminate the war from different angles, and some stream-of-consciousness-like interludes that suggest links between Iraq and Vietnam and other wars, and the original human sins of violence and hubris. The central and most compelling tale is told in the first person and often reads like a journal, recounting the experiences of a poet turned soldier, who finds himself in Baghdad, trapped in the mindless "Groundhog Day" loop of the war, patrolling the streets, "damned to drive the same maze over and over till somebody killed me." These sections attest to Mr. Scranton's keen reportorial eye and his Michael Herr-like gift for conveying the surreal feel of modern war—where real-life bleeds into nightmare, and the default emotional setting is "manic paranoid torpor."
Publishers Weekly
06/13/2016
Scranton’s provocative debut novel lucidly captures the fractured perspectives of war. Told in three recurring sections punctuated by fragmentary, poetic introductions, the lives of three characters unfold under the influence of the Iraq War which, at every turn, is mediated and distorted by the lens of mass media. The first section follows civilian Dahlia at a party somewhere in the American Southwest, where she meets Aaron, a veteran newly home from Iraq. Conflicting political ideologies clash as booze and drugs create a dangerous mix for the impassioned opinions. In the second section, Wilson weaves his armored vehicle through the streets of Baghdad while contemplating his role in the conflict. He performs the day-to-day grind of someone who only wears the uniform, cynically following orders sometimes rooted in prejudice against the Muslim civilians. In the third section, Qasim, a mathematics professor in Baghdad, tries to survive the brutality on both sides of the befuddling war while making sense of himself, his country, and what may become of both. Living with his uncle Mohammed and away from his wife, Lateefah, he struggles with the expectations of his family. Having enlisted in the U.S. Army from 2002 to 2006 and having been deployed to Iraq, Scranton writes with honesty and authority about a complicated clash of weapons, politics, and culture. His novel is an unflinching, and sometimes difficult, examination of humanity during wartime. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Praise for War Porn
"Forceful and unsettling."
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"One of the best and most disturbing war novels in years."
—The Wall Street Journal
"War Porn offers a view of the American military unlike anything else written about Iraq or Afghanistan. The book offers a guided meditation on Iraq certain to force long overdue introspection on how we think about the war, those who fought it and the Americans and Iraqis it affected. Though War Porn doesn’t set out to change anyone’s mind, it’s impossible to read it without reconsidering how you think about Iraq and our treatment of those who served."
—New Republic
"To read Scranton is to engage with a powerful intellect."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
"What impresses is the brutal immediacy of the writing, its authority. Roy Scranton is a truth telling war writer."
—E.L. Doctorow, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Ragtime and The March
"Roy Scranton’s searingly honest first novel is surreal, ultra-real, and like everything he writes from the heart. This examination of the tragedy of what happened in Iraq reaches out to touch of all us. A brilliant literary achievement."
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy
"Powerful, engaging, heartrending, corrosive and unyielding."
—Joyce Carol Oates
"I have never read a book like War Porn. Roy Scranton writes with unnerving power. There is much to admire here—the meticulous craftsmanship, the hysterical comic passages, the way the sheer audacity of vision is matched at every turn by the innovative skill to carry it out—but what I'm left with at the end is difficult to put into words. It's intense and troubling. It's what all truly excellent literature leaves you with. A sense of something shattering."
—Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment
"War Porn is dire, savage, and brilliant, a simmering fever-dream of a novel that's as pure and true in its vision of the long war as anything I've read. Roy Scranton is merciless—and why should he be anything but? War's corruption soaks through every layer of life, and War Porn drives home that truth with unflinching, and ultimately harrowing, honesty."
—Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"Scranton, a US veteran with an unusually poetic ear, captures the Beckettian banter—as well as trauma—of modern soldiering. War Porn rewards repeated reading."
—The Spectator (UK)
"In writing War Porn, Scranton has produced a literary work that doesn’t just describe the outrages of the war, but punches them into the American gut. War Porn contains some of the most significant and original writing on deployment to be found in contemporary American literature about the Iraq War."
—The Intercept
"[Scranton] has a real aesthetic skill and is moved by a genuine sympathy for humanity. Roy Scranton’s War Porn expresses and helps advance the profound social anger that is emerging amidst the rumble of a society devastated by imperialist war."
—World Socialist Web Site
"Roy Scranton’s War Porn is not a book you read once and put away. You read it, think about it, then read it again. Between its covers awaits a fracture in our cultural assumptions about war."
—Consequence Magazine
"Brilliant."
—The Rumpus
"[War Porn raises] interesting questions about the nature of those who demand and those who supply. Scranton is a gifted writer ."
—Electric Literature
"This book is truly unique—true in its fidelity to fact, unique in the depth of its empathy. In prose that rises to aphoristic, coruscating brilliance, Iraq vet Roy Scranton has painted, in words, the equivalent of Goya's war etchings. A rare and genuine masterpiece."
—Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, author of The Watch and The Storyteller of Marrakesh
"A harrowing novel of the Iraq invasion and occupation, War Porn exposes the dark heart of that war for all to see. Brilliant and stark, War Porn is that rare book that demands to be read out of sheer significance—a stunning accomplishment."
—Matt Gallagher, author of Youngblood
"Roy Scranton's four years of service in the U.S. Army lend his work an undeniable authority, but it's his ability to address multiple sides of the conflict that proves exceptional, coloring his fiction with a rare empathy."
—The Village Voice
"[War Porn is] a different kind of Iraq War novel, for sure, but it’s not just that. It’s an expression of Scranton’s philosophy about telling new, different stories as a means of survival."
—The Millions
"[A] fierce debut . . . Scranton delivers a poetic sensibility and a staccato writing style, and the result is a no-holds-barred amalgam of plotlines that is especially tragic given all that we now know about the wrenching mess that is today's Iraq."
—Booklist
"Scranton’s provocative debut novel lucidly captures the fractured perspectives of war. Scranton writes with honesty and authority about a complicated clash of weapons, politics, and culture. [War Porn] is an unflinching, and sometimes difficult, examination of humanity during wartime."
—Publishers Weekly
"An uncompromising look at the trauma of war."
—Library Journal
"A kaleidoscopic view of war experience . . . Scranton’s literary skill and fierceness of vision make him a stout antagonist for anyone who wants to take him on."
—Time Now
"Necessary."
—scene4 magazine
Library Journal
08/01/2016
The fragmented images of tortured prisoners from Abu Ghraib and the U.S. military's tactic of "shock and awe" are what many remember from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Scranton (Learning To Die in the Anthropocene; Fire and Forget) experienced these events firsthand during his 14-month deployment in Iraq with the U.S. Army. Here, in his debut novel, Scranton unflinchingly explores the political and moral stress of war inflicted on perpetrators, victims, and observers alike. Through the intertwining narratives of three characters—an American soldier serving in Baghdad, a math professor struggling to survive in occupied Iraq, and a vocal antiwar advocate at a barbecue in Utah—the author demonstrates how voyeurism functions as an anesthetic agent on both the spectator and the participant. Each character yearns to escape from and stop the brutality perceived in the world but finds the cyclical nature of violence inescapable. VERDICT Unlike most contemporary war literature, this work makes no attempt to excuse, venerate, or empathize with combat veterans. The result is an uncompromising look at the trauma of war that will leave readers shattered and disheartened, wondering whether the final gut punch illuminating the violence inherent in our culture was necessary or gratuitous.—Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM
