“[W]hy hasn’t the classic novel of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appeared?” asks Michael Lokesson. Maybe, he guesses, “the recent wars just don’t lend themselves to great literature”:
For the soldier fighting an insurgency, life is reactionary in nature: one is always waiting to be attacked — with IEDs, mortars, rockets, ambushes — by a force which fights on its own timetable, its own terrain, its own choosing. This instills in those fighting the insurgency a deep frustration, as one has no choice but to remain in a constant state of anticipatory readiness. A soldier’s day-to-day life is filled with activity — patrol, watch, meetings, construction, weapons maintenance — and still one waits.
In warfare of this nature, the soldier is passive to a startling degree, and even the war effort itself is built on passively securing the population rather than actively defeating the enemy. Molding passivity into great literature is never easy, as the current harvest of soldier’s novels attests, and the novelist who sets him or herself to the task is forced to climb a very steep mountain indeed. Can a truly classic novel arise under such conditions? I’d like to say yes, but I have my doubts. Great soldier’s novels are devilishly difficult to write, and the nature of modern war makes the road that much harder.
The Dish 