November 18th, 2009
Randyland, Part II | WW examines whether Randy Leonard is using his power to benefit downtown’s largest private property owner.81 comments
November 11th, 2009
Randyland | With the Mayor sidelined, Leonard takes over.98 comments
October 28th, 2009
Natural Selection11 comments
October 21st, 2009
Left Out | Why are two virtually identical eighth-grade girls treated so differently by Portland Public Schools?56 comments
October 14th, 2009
Who Took Our Jobs? | Oregon’s unemployment is at the top of the charts—again. Here’s why.90 comments
October 7th, 2009
Text Appeal | On the eve of the city’s biggest literary blowout, we hounded Wordstock authors with the questions that really matter. And some that don’t.0 comments
September 30th, 2009
Censored | The ten biggest stories ignored by the major media.22 comments
September 23rd, 2009
Meet Dr. Know | Got a question? Ask our new brainiac. 12 comments
September 16th, 2009
Modest Mouseketeers | His band rules the world, so why is Isaac Brock starting from scratch with two obscure Portland bands? 14 comments
September 9th, 2009
It’s Not My Fault | What people will say to get out of a Portland parking ticket.31 comments
[March 5th, 2003]
A teacher told him to stop writing and start reading William Gass, William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf for inspiration. The advice paid off, and Swofford was accepted into the prestigious University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where, he says, "all they ask of you is that you write."
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At first, Swofford wrote a fictional account of his experiences in the Gulf War. But when he suddenly introduced a character named "Swofford" into the narrative, it struck him that he should, perhaps, tackle the subject as memoir. The result, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, is a decidedly personal and raw view of the last war in Iraq from the point of view of a sniper, a trained marksman who can hit a target 900 yards away with frightening accuracy. The book takes readers over the author's conflicted attitudes toward the war's aims, through the tedium of the desert and the burning landscape of oil fires, and past American soldiers desecrating the bodies of dead Iraqi combatants. That Jarhead is hitting stores on the eve of what seems sure to be another war in Iraq isn't hurting the book's momentum.
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Swofford, 32, moved to Portland a little less than two years ago and wrote most of Jarhead here. Now a teacher at Portland's Lewis & Clark College, the Northwest Portland resident has toiled in relative anonymity, but that's all about to change. The New York Times says Jarhead is "some kind of classic, a bracing memoir that will go down...as one of the best books ever written about military life."
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His opinion about the current state of affairs? "Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a bully," Swofford says. "He's also a convenient target right now. This war has very little to do with weapons of mass destruction. It has to do with the region and wanting to bring some stability to the region...25, 50, 100 years from now, not three, four or five years from now."
The passages that follow are excerpts from Jarhead.
--Steffen Silvis
Willamette Week was unable to secure web rights to any portion of Swofford's memoirs. To read the excerpts you will need to pick up a print edition of this week's paper.
RECENT COMMENTS ON “JARHEAD”
Jarhead I have read and heard portions of the book on the radio.This is a must read for people who want to know what it means to be a front line grunt. You can gp to the ...
