American Sniper

This Memorial Day I was inspired to pause from my year of #LongReads for a quick jaunt through what has to be the most polarizing autobiography of the decade. There's a lot to talk about here, but plenty has already been said, and most of the most interesting discussion surrounding American Sniper has had very little to do with the content of the book itself. I don't want to spend this post tackling "bigger picture" issues like whether or not Chris Kyle was a hero (he clearly was) or a liar (he definitely was) or an asshole (it's very possible that he was) or whether or not the War in Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 or to what extent American civilians should thank, praise, and revere those in military service or whether Kyle's death was tragic or ironic (it was both) or why his story resonates so forcefully with so many Americans and disturbs so many others - I can't get into all of that. Smarter people than me have written ad nauseam about these topics and besides, I'm late to the party; the point-counterpoint back-and-forth hit its peak more than a year ago during Oscar Season and while I have my own opinions on several of these subjects that go beyond my glib parenthetical dismissals, this just isn't the time or place for them. This is the time and place to talk about the book, American Sniper, before it was a movie, as it was written (to some extent) by Chris Kyle, before he died young, when he was simply, as the subtitle suggests, the most lethal sniper in U.S. History.

And as a book - strictly as a collection of memories meant to educate, entertain, inform, or inspire an audience - I thought American Sniper left a lot to be desired.

First and foremost, it was poorly written. Not just in a "good old boy has no use for complex sentences or fancy words" way; the memories had no real sense of flow. An anecdote here and there, a tidbit on training, a factoid about the rules of engagement, an interjection from Kyle's wife Taya - it all just seemed like it poured out of Kyle or his ghostwriters in some kind of loose chronological order. What's more, there wasn't really a story here. Sadly, the sole reason Kyle's life and achievements are known and celebrated by so many Americans is his untimely death; before that, he was a virtual unknown. Best-selling author? His book - this one - debuted at number ten on the best-sellers list and trickled down from there. (Here's a link to the current list of nonfiction best-sellers; you tell me how well-known any of these stories are.) Only after he was murdered did his book soar up the charts, and while the film adaptation was commissioned before his death - meaning the book was likely bound for eventual success anyway - his story as it's written here doesn't really pack a particular punch or hammer home any specific points, which is likely why the most emotional scene in the movie was footage from Kyle's real-life funeral procession.

I need to be clear here - I'm not trying to say that the man's life didn't matter or that his death is the most important thing to happen to him. Hundreds of people showed up to his funeral and thousands more came to a public memorial. Kyle was certainly by all accounts a well-known and heavily respected individual who made a positive impact on tons of people. But that doesn't mean that he had an interesting story to tell - or more importantly, it doesn't mean he know how to make his story interesting.

In several ways, Kyle's memoir read like a sixth grader's army man fan fiction. "The blast knocked me over. Both of my knees were hurt, and hurt bad. But I knew if I said so, they'd pull me out of action, and I couldn't leave my boys behind." That's a noble-as-all-hell sentiment, sure, but it also rings just a little generic. A little spartan. Experts have pegged the number of Americans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan at 900,000. We can thank each and every one of them for their service and their sacrifice, but that doesn't mean all 900,000 of them have interesting stories to tell.

Fortunately, Kyle was no typical soldier. He deployed four times to Iraq and along the way he racked up more kills than any other sniper in U.S. history. Unfortunately, Kyle seemed to have very little interest in talking about sniping. Aside from a few anecdotes, he spends very few of his 370 pages discussing sniping techniques or detailing his craft in depth. Instead he spends most of his pages talking about how much training sucked, how he was shitfaced the night before his wedding, how no one should fuck with a Navy SEAL, and nondescript accounts of different firefights he went through.

Frustratingly, there's an interesting psychoanalysis brewing in the margins here. Kyle briefly talks about how difficult it was for him to readjust to civilian life between deployments, and specifically to being a husband and father. He struggles with anger and alcoholism after his service ends. Toward the end of his fourth and final deployment, Kyle's blood pressure was through the roof and he wasn't sleeping at all following an incident where he'd been shot in the head and back (protected by his helmet and armor but understandably rattled). Kyle never uses the term PTSD and he makes it clear throughout his book that one of the worst things a SEAL can do is reveal any sort of weakness. When his enlistment is up, Kyle laments that he isn't back in the fray in Iraq protecting American soldiers. But these internal struggles are buried and tossed aside as quickly as they come up. That's fine - this is Kyle's story after all, and if he's not comfortable expanding on his psychological issues, who am I to ask him to do so? But by the same token, when you monetize your life story you open it up to criticism from people like me, right? That's the price you pay to become a best-selling author.

I have other complaints. One is that the book contains way too much humblebragging. Kyle plays the part of the simple down-to-earth everyman well enough - he likes hunting, he's a staunch Christian man, he thinks LA is full of weirdos and nutjobs, he doesn't much care for glory or recognition - but it seems like every other page contains a cringeworthy sentence along the lines of, "It's not that I thought I was better than the rest of them, but I knew they all thought I was better than the rest of them, and as such, I had to be better than the rest of them." Don't you see? Kyle was the greatest, but he'd be the last to admit it. He might even be the most humble person he knows! Just remember that, especially  when you read about one of the half-dozen times he was arrested for getting into a bar fight and whooping someone else's ass...

Perhaps more than anything, Kyle's memoirs rang false at times because of what an unreliable narrator he was. And I'm not even talking about how he lost a libel case against Jessie Ventura for claiming to knock him out, or how he made up some crazy claims about killing looters during Hurricane Katrina (which, why would you even?) or how recent news reports refute his stated medal count. I'm just saying that even within this 370-page memoir, Kyle couldn't keep his own takes and personalities straight. The cynic in me thinks he's a hypocrite at best and a liar at worst, while the skeptic in me allows that, hey, he probably didn't even write half of this book himself, so disparities make perfect sense on some level. Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about.

• He claims in the book's opening that his kill count means nothing to him and that he never kept track of his kills, but there are multiple instances later on where he cites specific kill counts from different missions and admits to getting competitive with other SEALs over kill counts.
• He states assuredly that every person he killed in Iraq was "evil" and a "savage" and thus deserved to die, without ever entertaining the idea that they were people like him who just happened to be fighting for the other side in an international war. (Hey, whatever he has to tell himself.) But then he's aghast over generalizations his enemies have made - in particular, that all the Christian American invaders were evil and deserved to die. Hmm.
• He makes multiple remarks throughout the book about how on-edge he would get between deployments, picking fights at bars for perceived slights and raging out during traffic jams. And then at the end of the book he says one of the things war taught him was how silly the rest of us are for getting stressed out over "minor things" - presumably things like perceived insults and traffic jams.
• He makes no secret of how much he enjoys killing Iraqi insurgents, at more than one point going so far as to say he only wishes he'd killed more. But then when he discusses run-ins with war protesters, he gets bent out of shape over being called a killer; he wishes protesters would direct their ire at Congress and DC instead of at guys like him, who are only following the orders they've been given. Come on man, own it! Don't freely admit that you love killing Iraqis and then play the "well I'm not the one killing all these Iraqis" card!

You get the picture.

To be fair, I didn't hate this book, and it may have even exceeded my expectations. It's probably the least impressive war memoir I've read, but hey, that's a pretty short list. If nothing else, it was interesting to get a perspective on the Iraq War from someone who fought in it with no reservations or guilt whatsoever. (Not sarcasm!) All things considered, I don't think Chris Kyle was very much like me in many ways. And that's a good thing! You wouldn't want a whole bunch of me defending our freedom abroad - that much is for damn sure.