Wright, Evan

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Wright, Evan

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Attended Vassar College.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, CA. Office—Rolling Stone, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104. Agent—c/o Author Mail, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Journalist, editor, and author.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Magazine Award for Excellence in Reporting, 2004, for "The Killer Elite" series of articles for Rolling Stone.

WRITINGS:

Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to Time, ESPN, Hustler, LA Weekly, Men's Journal, and New York Times. Rolling Stone, contributing editor. Also contributor to anthologies, including Best American Crime Writing 2003.

ADAPTATIONS: Generation Kill has been adapted as a miniseries for Home Box Office (HBO).

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book about the Christian right.

SIDELIGHTS: Evan Wright may be best known as a journalist, and indeed, the material that forms his first book, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, began as a National Magazine Award-winning series of articles he wrote for Rolling Stone. Wright was one of the many journalists who were embedded with U.S. Army and Marine units during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In Wright's case, he followed the First Reconnaissance battalion of the First Marine Division as they spearheaded the drive to Baghdad. This was an extremely risky journey, for the soldiers as well as for Wright, and because of the need to travel lightly and securely Wright was not allowed to bring his laptop, satellite phone, or any other such devices. "Not having any technology was a great liberation for me," Wright told an interviewer for Publishers Weekly, explaining that the circumstances allowed him to "disappear inside" the unit to which he was assigned. As far as becoming an accepted member of the platoon itself, Wright explained to Bettijane Levine of the Los Angeles Times, being an expert on pornographic films—he reviewed 8,000 of them as a contributor to Hustler magazine—certainly did not hurt.

Although readers could be forgiven for seeing the title of Generation Kill and assuming that the book is a polemic against the war in Iraq, according to Levine the work "is a triumph of objectivity, with not a bit of tilt or spin." Wright allows the events and the young men to speak for themselves, and they do; as a Publishers Weekly reviewer commented, Generation Kill is "personality-driven, readable and insightful." Wright was blessed with good material in this regard; the soldiers of the First Recon form an interesting group of characters around which to build a narrative. They include the "Iceman" of the title, twenty-eight-year-old Sergeant Brad Colbert, the country-music-hating, order-loving leader of Wright's Humvee; Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick, the commander of Wright's platoon, a twenty-five-year-old Dartmouth graduate who sums up the military experience as "the incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary"; and twenty-two-year-old Corporal Josh Ray Person, an aspiring pop star with the declared intention of writing pro-war songs; as well as a Communist with a penchant for spouting Marx and a Native American radical. "Whatever Wright's political views may be—he quotes Marines both critical and supportive of the war, but does not opine," Paul Beston wrote in the American Spectator, "there is little question of his affection for these Marines, his concern for their welfare, and his quiet admiration of their ability to fight and yes, to kill."

Wright's admiration for his Marine comrades did not cause him to gloss over the difficult parts of their story. As Frederik Balfour noted in Business Week, "The strength of Generation Kill is Wright's unflinching attention to detail, even when it casts U.S. combatants in an unfavorable light." The book is not an easy read, according to Boston Globe reviewer Wen Stephenson, who explained: "brutally vivid, unsparingly candid, there are no reassuring pieties here." Wright explained his decision to write in this fashion to the Publishers Weekly interviewer: "It's like if you were writing a memoir of your family. You might love your family, but you would still not hide any of the dark secrets."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Wright, Evan, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York, NY), 2004.

PERIODICALS

American Spectator, March, 2005, Paul Beston, "Men at War," p. 60.

America's Intelligence Wire, June 29, 2004, transcript of Hannity and Alan Colmes interview with Wright.

Arena, October-November, 2004, Simon Cooper, "Accounting for War: What Can an 'Embedded' Description of War Tell Us about Life in Civilian Societies?," p. 49.

Booklist, June 1, 2004, David Pitt, review of Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, p. 1691.

Boston Globe, August 15, 2004, Wen Stephenson, "The Fog of War, from the Inside," p. D8.

Business Week, August 9, 2004, Frederik Balfour, "Fresh Killing Fields," p. 10.

Entertainment Weekly, June 18, 2004, Karyn L. Barr, review of Generation Kill, p. 90.

Los Angeles Times, July 7, 2004, Bettijane Levine, "Along for the Ride to Baghdad," p. E1.

Marine Corps Gazette, February, 2005, Daniel J. McSweeney, review of Generation Kill, p. 59.

Naval War College Review, winter, 2005, Reed Bonadonna, review of Generation Kill, p. 166.

New Statesman, August 2, 2004, Mark Bearn, review of Generation Kill, p. 38.

New York Times Book Review, November 14, 2004, David Lipsky, "Appointment in Samarra," p. 60.

People, July 19, 2004, interview with Wright, p. 46; December 27, 2004, review of Generation Kill, p. 63.

PR Newswire, May 6, 2004, "Evan Wright, Author of G. P. Putnam's Sons' Generation Kill, Wins Prestigious 2004 National Magazine Award."

Publishers Weekly, August 4, 2003, John F. Baker, "Short Takes," p. 14; May 24, 2004, review of Generation Kill, p. 56, Marc Leepson, "Leave Your Sat Phone at Home" (interview), p. 57.

Time, July 12, 2004, Lev Grossman, "After the Fighting, the Writing" p. 25.

USA Today, August 5, 2004, J. Ford Huffman, "A New Breed of Soldier," p. D4.