A Victim of Iraq and Katrina

Amazingly, Zackery Bowen fell afoul of both Iraq (as a soldier) and then Hurricane Katrina (as a citizen). Unfortunately, the book about his life (which ended with him committing a grizzly murder) gets a negative review:

Brown uses Bowen’s military service, and evident struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, as the narrative spine of Shake the Devil Off. “The story of Zack Bowen was not that of a voodoo-inspired, drugged-out French Quarter killer,” Brown writes, “but of an Iraq veteran who could not cope with the memories of fighting in some of the most intense combat. . . . I found it hard to imagine a life that contained more of the tragedies of our era than that of a combat veteran who suffered the consequences of the federal government’s disastrous policy decisions in both Baghdad and New Orleans.”

This is surely an overstatement— one can easily point to any number of people whose lives are ruined by calamitous government decisions, both deliberately and not. It’s clear that Bowen and his fellow soldiers experienced terrible psychological stresses that many still have not fully dealt with—and Brown, who tracked down many of those who served alongside Bowen in Iraq, does an admirable job of conveying the horrors of PTSD. However, the idea that what Bowen saw in the war, and then what he saw during Katrina, would lead him to commit a horrible murder and then jump from the rooftop bar of the Omni is too facile, and the book suffers from the weight of this organizing conceit.

That same review also covers Eggers’ newest novel:

Zeitoun is a remarkable and chilling book. Credit here obviously goes to Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun, who endured terrible uncertainty and the kind of violations that shake one’s faith in this country’s essential fairness under the law. But credit is also due to Eggers, who has fashioned the narrative with enormous skill. He relates the story entirely from the perspectives of Abdulrahman and Kathy. Initially, the spareness of the account is jarring, but the book’s simplicity lulls the reader into a sense of wonder. The descriptions of the silent, vacated New Orleans Zeitoun navigates in his canoe are transfixing—and that, in turn, makes the feelings of horror that assail him upon his detention even more profound. The story might easily have descended into a kind of pulpy melodrama; Eggers’s firm hand ensures that it is never less than riveting, and never overly dramatic.

Dave Eggers being lauded as “never overly dramatic.” My how times have changed . . .

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