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Fobbit
Fobbit \’fä-bit\, noun. Definition: A U.S. soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base, esp. during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2011). Pejorative.
In the satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield – where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like an office job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and a lot of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy.
Darkly humorous and based on the author's own experiences in Iraq, Fobbit is a fantastic debut that shows us a behind-the-scenes portrait of the real Iraq war.
In the satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield – where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like an office job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and a lot of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy.
Darkly humorous and based on the author's own experiences in Iraq, Fobbit is a fantastic debut that shows us a behind-the-scenes portrait of the real Iraq war.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
105 people are currently reading
2343 people want to read
About the author
David Abrams
17 books249 followersDavid Abrams is the author of the novels Brave Deeds (Grove/Atlantic, 2017) and Fobbit (Grove/Atlantic, 2012). Fobbit was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2012, an Indie Next pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Montana Honor Book, and a finalist for the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Abrams' short stories have appeared in Esquire, Glimmer Train, Narrative, Salamander, Connecticut Review, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, The North Dakota Review and many other publications. He retired from active-duty after serving in the U.S. Army for 20 years, a career which took him to Alaska, Texas, Georgia, the Pentagon, and Iraq. His blog, The Quivering Pen, can be found at: http://www.davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com
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June 19, 2018
"Sir, is your captain a complete and utter idiot prone to eating Stupid Sandwiches at every meal?"
Duret couldn't meet the battle captain's eyes. "Something like that, I guess."
I had been saving this book for a rainy day - that is to say, after being in something of a slump. I saw it as a treat: something I knew I would enjoy. I was right.
This is a book about American soldiers stationed at an FOB in Baghdad. Everyone is calling it "the modern Catch-22", but I don't think that's very fair. I suppose people always have the urge to compare something to a classic, but I wish they wouldn't. This book is not really like Catch-22, but since it is about war and has a sense of humor, it gets placed side-by-side with Heller's time-honored tome. This book is not as funny as Catch-22, and it has a completely different tone.
...
Each chapter deals with life from the perspective of different people on base:
1.) Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, Jr., a "fobbit" who never leaves the comforting air-conditioning of the relatively cushy FOB. Fobbits are soldiers who avoid leaving base and are terrified of gunfire, bombs, and dying in Iraq. Soldiers who never "get their hands dirty." The term "fobbit" was brand-new to me, but I am very familiar with the term "REMF" and fobbits are just about the same thing.
Gooding is a public affairs officer and it's his job to write press releases about what's going on in Baghdad and put "a positive spin on things," even when there's nothing positive to be spun. Abrams puts a lot of humor and sarcasm in a bureaucratic job which basically entails spewing bullshit to the press and the "ostrich Americans" back home who have their heads in the sand and only want to hear uplifting things about Iraq.
No one wanted to read: "A soldier was vaporized when his patrol hit an IED, his flesh thrown into a nearby tree where it draped like Spanish moss."
Gooding is always reading some classic book (A Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote, etc.). Once he is even shown reading Catch-22 in what was actually a very funny and meta moment. I feel like this character is probably the closest to the actual author. He's smart and even though he is a self-preservationist who avoids any kind of conflict or combat, he seems like a basically likable person. He keeps a secret diary about Iraq on a thumb drive and it's through this diary that we get to experience a different style of writing than Abrams normally uses.
2.) Lieutenant Colonel Vic Duret. This was by far my favorite character: a hardass, brave, decision-maker who goes out and faces IEDs, terrorists, and gunfire every day. Even though he puts on a very gruff and tough exterior, he spends the book constantly fantasizing about seeing his wife and dog again. Especially his wife's breasts, which he is rather obsessed about. I found this endearing. I am a soft-touch for a man who loves his wife and dog.
There were just two things that he wanted at this particular moment his golden retriever, Ginger, snuffling and slobbering against the palm of his hand; and his wife's tit in his mouth. While Ginger licked his hand, he'd suck on his wife like he was a baby and if he was lucky she wouldn't catch him crying over all the bad shit he'd brought home from Baghdad.
He also is still reeling from the fact that his brother-in-law was killed in the September 11 attacks. He often suffers from visions of his brother-in-law, Ross, stumbling around his office engulfed in flames and leaping from the window to a certain death.
Ross dead Ross dead Ross dead. Running through the remains of his office, crackling and sizzling, flesh dripping off the tips of his fingers, legs carrying him forward by reflex alone because there was nothing left inside of Ross not already cooked by fuel and flame.
The pounding in Duret's brain vibrated against his sinus cavity. Behind the curtain of his fingers, he broke into a sweat as, inside his head, his brother-in-law bumped against desks and plunged through the blizzard of once-important papers, finding his way by instinct, not sight or touch, to the blown-out window. Once there, he launched into the cool blue space, soaring aflame into the buffeting wind. Ross was already gone - no longer the brother-in-law Vic had fished with, laughed with, clinked beer bottles with, mutually grouched about the wife/sister with - so it wasn't really Ross that morning who arced like an ember out of the tower.
He also loves words and word-play; for instance, he calls Gooding "Gooding Two Shoes." He is merciful, upfront, and stalwart - probably the closest thing this book comes to a "hero" figure.
3.) Captain Abe Shrinkle. This guy is a complete fuck-up, and is the source for all the other characters angst in the book, as they scramble to try and cover-up Shrinkle's incompetence and many mistakes. He is indecisive when he needs to act and makes stupid split-second decisions when he should be patient and think things through - resulting in more than one death and a lot of damage to military equipment. He's not exactly a comic character seeing as his ineptitude results in people dying once or twice, but he is a buffoon character who is swollen with his own self-importance and blind to the fact that he's a liability to everyone around him.
He's even terrified of the men and women under his command because he knows they hate and despise him.
He also does less dangerous, but still repulsive things like milk the care package system so he gets three or four boxes full of goodies everyday - which he hoards and doesn't share with anyone.
Shrinkle isn't stuck in one place, Abrams gives him an interesting story arc and I liked seeing what kind of trouble he was going to get in next, while at the same time feeling disgust for him and all his thoughts and actions.
4.) Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad is another "comic" character - a fat, weak coward who suffers from nosebleeds and writes simpering letters full of lies to his religious, controlling mother back in Tennessee. These letters are funny to the reader because Harkleroad fills them with false stories about being brave and saving people - when in reality he never leaves the base and is a sniveling moron.
This character isn't as funny or as layered as Shrinkle, and I feel like Abrams came down a little too heavy on making this character weak and cowardly, bloated with self-importance, pathetic dreams of glory, and an obsession with food. This is more of a caricature than a real man.
5.) Sergeant Brock Lumley - a brave, decisive soldier who works under the moron Shrinkle.
...
FEMALE SOLDIERS
There are two female soldiers that Abrams lightly focuses on: Private First Class Allison Anderson and Specialist Cinnamon Carnicle. He only paints subdued character studies of these women, but doesn't really try to get in their heads - which I appreciate. Better to back off and not try to write a woman's perspective if you are going to screw it up. Some male authors can write great female character POVs etc., but most can't - and if you can't I'd rather you do the smart thing and stick with what you know than attempt a female POV, get it horrendously wrong, and make me angry with you. Props to Abrams for knowing his own strengths and weaknesses.
I feel like Abrams treats the female soldiers with nothing but respect and good humor. He did a great job in this book of making female soldiers present and real.
...
INANIMATE OBJECTS:
There are two points in the book where Abrams writes from the POV of an inanimate object: once a robot that works for the explosive unit, and once a mortar shell that is launched by terrorists and is seeking to destroy human flesh. I found these intervals interesting and well written.
...
In summary - a very enjoyable book. Abrams doesn't mute or downplay the horrors of war (this isn't a rampant comedy) but he has a dry, delightful sense of humor that pokes fun at army bureaucracy and some of the more ridiculous aspects of army life.
...
UPDATE: 06/19/2018
I'm thinking about re-reading this. Not only am I constantly recommending it to people IRL, but it's still relevant today. Great book.
Duret couldn't meet the battle captain's eyes. "Something like that, I guess."
I had been saving this book for a rainy day - that is to say, after being in something of a slump. I saw it as a treat: something I knew I would enjoy. I was right.
This is a book about American soldiers stationed at an FOB in Baghdad. Everyone is calling it "the modern Catch-22", but I don't think that's very fair. I suppose people always have the urge to compare something to a classic, but I wish they wouldn't. This book is not really like Catch-22, but since it is about war and has a sense of humor, it gets placed side-by-side with Heller's time-honored tome. This book is not as funny as Catch-22, and it has a completely different tone.
...
Each chapter deals with life from the perspective of different people on base:
1.) Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, Jr., a "fobbit" who never leaves the comforting air-conditioning of the relatively cushy FOB. Fobbits are soldiers who avoid leaving base and are terrified of gunfire, bombs, and dying in Iraq. Soldiers who never "get their hands dirty." The term "fobbit" was brand-new to me, but I am very familiar with the term "REMF" and fobbits are just about the same thing.
Gooding is a public affairs officer and it's his job to write press releases about what's going on in Baghdad and put "a positive spin on things," even when there's nothing positive to be spun. Abrams puts a lot of humor and sarcasm in a bureaucratic job which basically entails spewing bullshit to the press and the "ostrich Americans" back home who have their heads in the sand and only want to hear uplifting things about Iraq.
No one wanted to read: "A soldier was vaporized when his patrol hit an IED, his flesh thrown into a nearby tree where it draped like Spanish moss."
Gooding is always reading some classic book (A Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote, etc.). Once he is even shown reading Catch-22 in what was actually a very funny and meta moment. I feel like this character is probably the closest to the actual author. He's smart and even though he is a self-preservationist who avoids any kind of conflict or combat, he seems like a basically likable person. He keeps a secret diary about Iraq on a thumb drive and it's through this diary that we get to experience a different style of writing than Abrams normally uses.
2.) Lieutenant Colonel Vic Duret. This was by far my favorite character: a hardass, brave, decision-maker who goes out and faces IEDs, terrorists, and gunfire every day. Even though he puts on a very gruff and tough exterior, he spends the book constantly fantasizing about seeing his wife and dog again. Especially his wife's breasts, which he is rather obsessed about. I found this endearing. I am a soft-touch for a man who loves his wife and dog.
There were just two things that he wanted at this particular moment his golden retriever, Ginger, snuffling and slobbering against the palm of his hand; and his wife's tit in his mouth. While Ginger licked his hand, he'd suck on his wife like he was a baby and if he was lucky she wouldn't catch him crying over all the bad shit he'd brought home from Baghdad.
He also is still reeling from the fact that his brother-in-law was killed in the September 11 attacks. He often suffers from visions of his brother-in-law, Ross, stumbling around his office engulfed in flames and leaping from the window to a certain death.
Ross dead Ross dead Ross dead. Running through the remains of his office, crackling and sizzling, flesh dripping off the tips of his fingers, legs carrying him forward by reflex alone because there was nothing left inside of Ross not already cooked by fuel and flame.
The pounding in Duret's brain vibrated against his sinus cavity. Behind the curtain of his fingers, he broke into a sweat as, inside his head, his brother-in-law bumped against desks and plunged through the blizzard of once-important papers, finding his way by instinct, not sight or touch, to the blown-out window. Once there, he launched into the cool blue space, soaring aflame into the buffeting wind. Ross was already gone - no longer the brother-in-law Vic had fished with, laughed with, clinked beer bottles with, mutually grouched about the wife/sister with - so it wasn't really Ross that morning who arced like an ember out of the tower.
He also loves words and word-play; for instance, he calls Gooding "Gooding Two Shoes." He is merciful, upfront, and stalwart - probably the closest thing this book comes to a "hero" figure.
3.) Captain Abe Shrinkle. This guy is a complete fuck-up, and is the source for all the other characters angst in the book, as they scramble to try and cover-up Shrinkle's incompetence and many mistakes. He is indecisive when he needs to act and makes stupid split-second decisions when he should be patient and think things through - resulting in more than one death and a lot of damage to military equipment. He's not exactly a comic character seeing as his ineptitude results in people dying once or twice, but he is a buffoon character who is swollen with his own self-importance and blind to the fact that he's a liability to everyone around him.
He's even terrified of the men and women under his command because he knows they hate and despise him.
He also does less dangerous, but still repulsive things like milk the care package system so he gets three or four boxes full of goodies everyday - which he hoards and doesn't share with anyone.
Shrinkle isn't stuck in one place, Abrams gives him an interesting story arc and I liked seeing what kind of trouble he was going to get in next, while at the same time feeling disgust for him and all his thoughts and actions.
4.) Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad is another "comic" character - a fat, weak coward who suffers from nosebleeds and writes simpering letters full of lies to his religious, controlling mother back in Tennessee. These letters are funny to the reader because Harkleroad fills them with false stories about being brave and saving people - when in reality he never leaves the base and is a sniveling moron.
This character isn't as funny or as layered as Shrinkle, and I feel like Abrams came down a little too heavy on making this character weak and cowardly, bloated with self-importance, pathetic dreams of glory, and an obsession with food. This is more of a caricature than a real man.
5.) Sergeant Brock Lumley - a brave, decisive soldier who works under the moron Shrinkle.
...
FEMALE SOLDIERS
There are two female soldiers that Abrams lightly focuses on: Private First Class Allison Anderson and Specialist Cinnamon Carnicle. He only paints subdued character studies of these women, but doesn't really try to get in their heads - which I appreciate. Better to back off and not try to write a woman's perspective if you are going to screw it up. Some male authors can write great female character POVs etc., but most can't - and if you can't I'd rather you do the smart thing and stick with what you know than attempt a female POV, get it horrendously wrong, and make me angry with you. Props to Abrams for knowing his own strengths and weaknesses.
I feel like Abrams treats the female soldiers with nothing but respect and good humor. He did a great job in this book of making female soldiers present and real.
...
INANIMATE OBJECTS:
There are two points in the book where Abrams writes from the POV of an inanimate object: once a robot that works for the explosive unit, and once a mortar shell that is launched by terrorists and is seeking to destroy human flesh. I found these intervals interesting and well written.
...
In summary - a very enjoyable book. Abrams doesn't mute or downplay the horrors of war (this isn't a rampant comedy) but he has a dry, delightful sense of humor that pokes fun at army bureaucracy and some of the more ridiculous aspects of army life.
...
UPDATE: 06/19/2018
I'm thinking about re-reading this. Not only am I constantly recommending it to people IRL, but it's still relevant today. Great book.
October 31, 2016
If somewhere there is a society devoted to bleakness, where to have a bleak outlook is aspired to by all, and the highest virtue is to live life as bleakly as possible, this book should be on their school syllabus. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Life can be bleak. War is always bleak. So it follows that life during war is likely not a fun-filled prance through a flowering meadow. Fobbit is a book set during the recent U.S-led Iraqi conflict, and while there is much humor in the book the portrait it paints of soldiers at war is one that I found terribly sad.
Fobbit follows the soldiering of several very different men. The first, Captain Abe Shrinkle, is an incompetent frontline 'door-kicker' who is way out of his depth in the life-or-death situations he finds himself in. Shrinkle's constant screw-ups and the death spiral of his army career are a great window into the mismanagement and butt-covering that the army, like any large organisation, can engage in to the detriment of it's combat soldiers.
The second narrative follows Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, one of the titular Fobbits (REMFs in a previous era) - non-combat personnel who spend their tours working in the airconditioned comparative safety of Forward Operating Bases- also knows as FOBs. Gooding spends his war writing and redrafting press releases in a sort of absurdist bureaucratic hell, carrying out pointless tasks for his incompetent, sniveling boss. Gooding's work, while safer and more cushy than that of a frontline soldier, is in it's own way sad and soul-warping.
Other characters who feature prominently include Vic Duret- a hardarse Colonel trying to deal with Shrinkle's incompetence, and the aformentioned snivelling boss who makes Gooding's life a misery.
None of the characters are having what you would call a good deployment. While some of them dodge bullets and dispense death, and others wear a butt-shaped groove in an air-conned office chair it soon becomes clear that in Abrams' Iraq nobody escapes the war without taking shrapnel of at least the psychological sort.
Despite this grimness, Fobbit is an enjoyable read. Abram's book is billed as a sort of Iraqi Catch-22 but to my mind this novel is blacker and less comedic than Heller's book. In saying this, Fobbit is still pretty funny in parts - imagine The Hurt Locker meets Office Space - and there are a number of memorably amusing scenes. In particular Abrams' portrayal of Aussie soldiers as tanned, easygoing and Fosters-slugging is pretty funny, although I've never seen a real aussie drink a can of Fosters Lager.
Overall, I enjoyed Fobbit, and it flows well. Abrams' portrayal of war as violent, confusing, bureaucratic and absurd resonated with me, and I felt his authentic experiences as a soldier coming through the pages. Fobbit isn't the new Catch-22, but it doesn't need to be.
Fobbit follows the soldiering of several very different men. The first, Captain Abe Shrinkle, is an incompetent frontline 'door-kicker' who is way out of his depth in the life-or-death situations he finds himself in. Shrinkle's constant screw-ups and the death spiral of his army career are a great window into the mismanagement and butt-covering that the army, like any large organisation, can engage in to the detriment of it's combat soldiers.
The second narrative follows Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, one of the titular Fobbits (REMFs in a previous era) - non-combat personnel who spend their tours working in the airconditioned comparative safety of Forward Operating Bases- also knows as FOBs. Gooding spends his war writing and redrafting press releases in a sort of absurdist bureaucratic hell, carrying out pointless tasks for his incompetent, sniveling boss. Gooding's work, while safer and more cushy than that of a frontline soldier, is in it's own way sad and soul-warping.
Other characters who feature prominently include Vic Duret- a hardarse Colonel trying to deal with Shrinkle's incompetence, and the aformentioned snivelling boss who makes Gooding's life a misery.
None of the characters are having what you would call a good deployment. While some of them dodge bullets and dispense death, and others wear a butt-shaped groove in an air-conned office chair it soon becomes clear that in Abrams' Iraq nobody escapes the war without taking shrapnel of at least the psychological sort.
Despite this grimness, Fobbit is an enjoyable read. Abram's book is billed as a sort of Iraqi Catch-22 but to my mind this novel is blacker and less comedic than Heller's book. In saying this, Fobbit is still pretty funny in parts - imagine The Hurt Locker meets Office Space - and there are a number of memorably amusing scenes. In particular Abrams' portrayal of Aussie soldiers as tanned, easygoing and Fosters-slugging is pretty funny, although I've never seen a real aussie drink a can of Fosters Lager.
Overall, I enjoyed Fobbit, and it flows well. Abrams' portrayal of war as violent, confusing, bureaucratic and absurd resonated with me, and I felt his authentic experiences as a soldier coming through the pages. Fobbit isn't the new Catch-22, but it doesn't need to be.
November 8, 2016
Definitely disappointed with Fobbit. Mildly amusing and insightful Iraq observations for the first two chapters, but then it just begins to tell the same thing over and over. There's no central inciting incident or storyline to drive the pages. Worst, the characters are all treated with an equal and baffling mild authorial disdain or contempt. I get the fact that 'Fobbits' are the lowest of the low with their timidness and desk jobs (I understood this after it was TOLD to me in the very first line of the book), but I'm surprised there are no alternate angles of courage or wisdom to balance things out and give the story some dimension. Instead we get Gooding, Shrinkle and Harkleroad, each more pathetic than the next doing their level best to act mousy and ridiculous in scene after embarrassing scene. It almost feels like Abrams wrote the book as lengthy school-yard revenge against forces or individuals who had wronged him over the years. It may be successful on that level, but (IMO) not as piece of reporting or literature or storytelling.
December 14, 2012
This brilliant, powerfully rendered debut seizes you by the collar; spits, shouts, whispers and laughs in your ear, drags you through the sweat, pus, blood and grit of war in Iraq, 2005, and ultimately pulls every string in your heart to reveal at its core, as only a true classic war story can, the insanity of humans desperately battling the inanity of mayhem and violence. Explosive and ironic, sandstorms kicking up from the pages will land in your teeth. This novel was written in surround sound and 3-D vision.--A 360 degree experience. Abrams rips away every kind of mask to give those of us, safe at home, a glimpse of the truth.
December 28, 2019
I read an uncorrected advanced review copy; please bear in mind that some of the small problems I saw may have been fixed in the final revision.
First, the positives. The book paints a convincing picture of the claustrophobic world of the Forward Operating Base during the early years of the American occupation of Baghdad -- around 2005. The novel describes daily life of the Army bureaucrats who live and work there ("fobbits"), with some of the residents getting a more sympathetic rendering than others. Along with the Fobbits, sharing the same mess hall, etc, are the "door-kickers", real soldiers who go out on patrol every day, and sometimes return with fewer than started. We see some of their experiences "outside the wall" as well.
The central characters of the novel work in the Public Affairs office writing press releases, the most important of which, of course, report news of American soldiers killed in action. The press releases go through various levels of editing up the chain of command, starting out as bland but somewhat informative accounts of how soldiers died, and ending up as mealy-mouthed double-talk that only mention the soldier's death in passing. By the time these virtually useless dispatches have been approved and released, The New York times has already reported the story in depth, and CNN has shown footage of where it happened. Nobody is going to read the stupid press release; nobody cares. Yet the P.A. fobbits have to crank them out; that's their assigned role in the war effort. You have only to imagine Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut telling a similar tale to get the general feel for what Abrams is attempting.
In one minor recurring piece, there is a tiny, smelly under-equipped gym where some fobbits and some door-kickers go to work out. Abrams makes you feel how this run-down, depressing "Recreation Facility" is the last place anyone would want to be. Except anywhere else, that is. Especially outside the walls of the FOB on the streets of Baghdad, where people are trying to kill you. Or even in the cubicle warren, where minutes go by like hours.
So all of that is good.
The negatives are that Abrams is not (yet) a Heller or a Vonnegut or a Norman Mailer. Abrams's heart is in the right place as he tries to convey the horror and absurdity of war -- horror that even bureaucrats must sometimes face -- but his talents don't match his ambition. The book never decides whether it's an out-and-out satire like Catch 22, a quasi-realist satire like the TV show M.A.S.H, or a real character-driven novel. So as a result the satire tends to be generally mild, while the character development is generally weak and predictable. And there are literally hundreds of minor instances of cringe-inducing sentences, metaphors, images. For example, early on a fobbit is described as purchasing a piece of bogus razor-sharp shrapnel on the eve of his return to the USA, something he can show friends as proof that he was really in a war. Abrams explains how the shrapnel was made from a junked car fender by an enterprising Iraqi using a ball peen hammer. But a ball peen hammer doesn't have a sharp edge and couldn't be used to make such a shard. This isn't bad writing, per se, but it's unfortunate. If he had just written "using a ball peen hammer and a cold chisel" there would have been no problem. I lay the blame for a lot of these errors at the feet of Abrams's editor.
I liked the book well enough to finish reading it. Abrams has passion and has given us an interesting look inside a Forward Operating Base, which is, I think a valuable contribution to our understanding of the whole war. Abrams is not a horrible writer, like, for example, Dan Brown. There's real potential there. But I do hope that on his next novel he works with an editor who makes more liberal use of the red ink.
First, the positives. The book paints a convincing picture of the claustrophobic world of the Forward Operating Base during the early years of the American occupation of Baghdad -- around 2005. The novel describes daily life of the Army bureaucrats who live and work there ("fobbits"), with some of the residents getting a more sympathetic rendering than others. Along with the Fobbits, sharing the same mess hall, etc, are the "door-kickers", real soldiers who go out on patrol every day, and sometimes return with fewer than started. We see some of their experiences "outside the wall" as well.
The central characters of the novel work in the Public Affairs office writing press releases, the most important of which, of course, report news of American soldiers killed in action. The press releases go through various levels of editing up the chain of command, starting out as bland but somewhat informative accounts of how soldiers died, and ending up as mealy-mouthed double-talk that only mention the soldier's death in passing. By the time these virtually useless dispatches have been approved and released, The New York times has already reported the story in depth, and CNN has shown footage of where it happened. Nobody is going to read the stupid press release; nobody cares. Yet the P.A. fobbits have to crank them out; that's their assigned role in the war effort. You have only to imagine Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut telling a similar tale to get the general feel for what Abrams is attempting.
In one minor recurring piece, there is a tiny, smelly under-equipped gym where some fobbits and some door-kickers go to work out. Abrams makes you feel how this run-down, depressing "Recreation Facility" is the last place anyone would want to be. Except anywhere else, that is. Especially outside the walls of the FOB on the streets of Baghdad, where people are trying to kill you. Or even in the cubicle warren, where minutes go by like hours.
So all of that is good.
The negatives are that Abrams is not (yet) a Heller or a Vonnegut or a Norman Mailer. Abrams's heart is in the right place as he tries to convey the horror and absurdity of war -- horror that even bureaucrats must sometimes face -- but his talents don't match his ambition. The book never decides whether it's an out-and-out satire like Catch 22, a quasi-realist satire like the TV show M.A.S.H, or a real character-driven novel. So as a result the satire tends to be generally mild, while the character development is generally weak and predictable. And there are literally hundreds of minor instances of cringe-inducing sentences, metaphors, images. For example, early on a fobbit is described as purchasing a piece of bogus razor-sharp shrapnel on the eve of his return to the USA, something he can show friends as proof that he was really in a war. Abrams explains how the shrapnel was made from a junked car fender by an enterprising Iraqi using a ball peen hammer. But a ball peen hammer doesn't have a sharp edge and couldn't be used to make such a shard. This isn't bad writing, per se, but it's unfortunate. If he had just written "using a ball peen hammer and a cold chisel" there would have been no problem. I lay the blame for a lot of these errors at the feet of Abrams's editor.
I liked the book well enough to finish reading it. Abrams has passion and has given us an interesting look inside a Forward Operating Base, which is, I think a valuable contribution to our understanding of the whole war. Abrams is not a horrible writer, like, for example, Dan Brown. There's real potential there. But I do hope that on his next novel he works with an editor who makes more liberal use of the red ink.
October 10, 2012
It took almost twenty years for the great World War Two books to start to appear; the same can be said for Vietnam books (to the extent that the books were set in Vietnam and not simply about the war, a la Catch-22). That means we can look forward to the first great Iraq War book in about ten years. In the meantime, we have David Abrams’ Fobbit.
Fobbit was for me an exercise in mixed feelings. Abrams nails the atmosphere, the places, the everyday life during a rear-area deployment in the Sandbox. I was briefly a fobbit-like creature in Qatar, which makes a cameo appearance partway through the book (the Topoff’s moved since you were there, Dave); I attended those meetings, I edited those PowerPoint slides, I read those SIGACTs, I sat in those operations centers with football or NASCAR on the big screen on Sundays. The rhythms of shifts in a windowless box, the inanities of staff work, the theme menus at the DFAC, the dusty little PX – been there, done that. All that part is spot-on.
However, some of the main caricatures (not a typo) pushed me out of the story. Fobbit has been compared to Catch-22, but the reason the latter has endured as one of the classic antiwar novels is that its characters, while tweaked, are essentially recognizable humans while the war and the system it engenders are the villains. Abrams, however, stocks his work with several major characters so grotesque that they can exist only as punching bags. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen an obese slob in uniform, far less an obese senior officer; I have to hope an infantry officer as spectacularly incompetent as Captain Shrinkle would’ve been weeded out before he pinned on his railroad tracks. Even the more solid characters – PR drudge SSG Gooding and battalion commander LTC Duret come to mind – fall into repetition of the qualities that make them types rather than humans. Ironically, Abrams’ secondary characters are more human and more believable than some of the major ones.
God knows there’s plenty to lampoon about our Iraq and Afghan misadventures. The constantly stirring spaghetti bowl that is HQ organization, the primacy of PowerPoint, the transplanted pieces of home that make the theater even more unreal, the ridiculous attempts by senior leadership to impose chaste wholesomeness on young men and women trained to be aggressive and physical, the drumbeat of the deployment calendar – these are the latest wrinkles on the human enterprise of war and make for great literary furniture. Fobbit touches on all of these, and more. But where Fobbit falls short – and what keeps us going back to Catch-22 and M*A*S*H and so on – is the story of how relatively normal people react to the stresses and absurdities of war. This is almost there, but it tries too hard and too many of its shots hit in the white.
Maybe in ten years we’ll get the Great Iraq War Book. Until then, you can give Fobbit a try. The self-satirizing world in which it’s set is as good a depiction as you’ll get, but keep a grain of salt or two for the characters.
Fobbit was for me an exercise in mixed feelings. Abrams nails the atmosphere, the places, the everyday life during a rear-area deployment in the Sandbox. I was briefly a fobbit-like creature in Qatar, which makes a cameo appearance partway through the book (the Topoff’s moved since you were there, Dave); I attended those meetings, I edited those PowerPoint slides, I read those SIGACTs, I sat in those operations centers with football or NASCAR on the big screen on Sundays. The rhythms of shifts in a windowless box, the inanities of staff work, the theme menus at the DFAC, the dusty little PX – been there, done that. All that part is spot-on.
However, some of the main caricatures (not a typo) pushed me out of the story. Fobbit has been compared to Catch-22, but the reason the latter has endured as one of the classic antiwar novels is that its characters, while tweaked, are essentially recognizable humans while the war and the system it engenders are the villains. Abrams, however, stocks his work with several major characters so grotesque that they can exist only as punching bags. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen an obese slob in uniform, far less an obese senior officer; I have to hope an infantry officer as spectacularly incompetent as Captain Shrinkle would’ve been weeded out before he pinned on his railroad tracks. Even the more solid characters – PR drudge SSG Gooding and battalion commander LTC Duret come to mind – fall into repetition of the qualities that make them types rather than humans. Ironically, Abrams’ secondary characters are more human and more believable than some of the major ones.
God knows there’s plenty to lampoon about our Iraq and Afghan misadventures. The constantly stirring spaghetti bowl that is HQ organization, the primacy of PowerPoint, the transplanted pieces of home that make the theater even more unreal, the ridiculous attempts by senior leadership to impose chaste wholesomeness on young men and women trained to be aggressive and physical, the drumbeat of the deployment calendar – these are the latest wrinkles on the human enterprise of war and make for great literary furniture. Fobbit touches on all of these, and more. But where Fobbit falls short – and what keeps us going back to Catch-22 and M*A*S*H and so on – is the story of how relatively normal people react to the stresses and absurdities of war. This is almost there, but it tries too hard and too many of its shots hit in the white.
Maybe in ten years we’ll get the Great Iraq War Book. Until then, you can give Fobbit a try. The self-satirizing world in which it’s set is as good a depiction as you’ll get, but keep a grain of salt or two for the characters.
January 31, 2013
While often praised as hilarious I didn't it find it so funny. Sure there were parts that were mildly funny but over all felt the heft of the characters plight and its themes.
Overall I'd say I enjoyed it more than I did The Yellow Birds but not as much as I did Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.
I think this book capped off the reading of the other two books nicely and now feel like I can take a bit of a break from reading about the Iraq war. I am happy that all three of these recently published books took on the Iraq War, with the closeness and truthfulness that fiction allows.
Overall I'd say I enjoyed it more than I did The Yellow Birds but not as much as I did Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.
I think this book capped off the reading of the other two books nicely and now feel like I can take a bit of a break from reading about the Iraq war. I am happy that all three of these recently published books took on the Iraq War, with the closeness and truthfulness that fiction allows.
November 11, 2012
Making war and death the subject of satire and humor is a monumentally difficult task, and only a few, like Joseph Heller, can pull it off. David Abrams achieves that difficult task here, and Fobbitt fully warrants its accolades as the Catch 22 of the Iraq war. It's an eye-opening view of the lives of soldiers operating in Forward Operating Base in the middle of Baghdad. Public Affairs Office Chance Gooding serves as the moral center of the book, and he is fully aware of the futility of what he does - filing press releases that distort the harsh realities of the war to keep a positive spin on the effort for the folks at home, while the press ignores the military's propaganda because they're way ahead of them in uncovering the real facts of every incident. Gooding is surrounded by incompetents - his boss, who rewrites him mercifully, can't stop his nose from bleeding in every moment of crisis, and who blotches his clothes with continent-shaped food stains from his constant over eating. But perhaps the poor soldier you feel most sympathy for the hapless Captain Abe Shrinkle, who does everything wrong - from peeing himself when a local national, and suspected suicide bomber, gets his car stuck under a tank; to tossing a hand grenade into an American military fuel truck he doesn't want to have be captured by insurgents, and in so doing fries a another local who had crawled under the truck. His general consigns the inept captain to work the towel service at the F.O.B.'s ridiculously ill-equipped gym. I won't give any more away about Shrinkle's fate because it's a key part of the books culmination. The characters, the plotting, and the humor in this book are pitch perfect. I enjoyed every page and was sorry to see it end. It's one of a number of great books about Iraqi soldiers that came out this year, along with the terrific Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and Kevin Powers' Yellow Birds. Abrams' book reads like an instant classic. Abrams is a veteran and every page is fully of anecdotes and insights that only someone's who lived through this would know. (Care packages are a source of rich satire in the novel, as Shrinkle is a hoarder of them, but the book still inspired me to send one!)
January 7, 2016
I'll be honest. I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. I already knew David Abrams to be a phenomenal writer. And I'd read the glowing reviews and blurbs for this novel and was quick to buy it. But..."an Iraq war comedy"?
But once I began reading, I became engrossed in this story and these ragtag Fobbits. Abrams immerses you in this world. The writing flows seamlessly with sharp dialogue and quick cuts. Abrams knows where to linger and where to just touch base and move on. All the many characters jump off the page they are so alive. And the book is undeniably funny.
Then, there are these moments:
"Chance stared at the TV screens. Al-Arabiya TV was showing footage from the scene. Bodies were stacked like cordwood along the pavement. Some were covered with sheets, some were draped in tarps of gold foil (perhaps some building material dug out of the trash nearby). When they ran out of materials to use, mourners just pulled shirts up over the dead faces. Still, as the camera panned along the sidewalk morgue, the breeze lifted the corners of the blankets and the gold foil and the dead looked at Gooding through the camera--the open mouths with their teeth dirtied by river water, the rolled-back eyes, the knitted brows, the look of confusion. A young boy in a T-shirt, flies walking across his eyeballs, reached out his arms for his mother, her face up on the bridge rapidly receding from his field of vision. The camera panned. The buckled limbs, the splayed feet, the hundreds and hundreds of shapeless mounds beneath the sheets: it was almost too much for Gooding to bear."
I can't recommend this novel enough. Or anything that Abrams writes for that matter. I look forward to whatever comes next from this author.
But once I began reading, I became engrossed in this story and these ragtag Fobbits. Abrams immerses you in this world. The writing flows seamlessly with sharp dialogue and quick cuts. Abrams knows where to linger and where to just touch base and move on. All the many characters jump off the page they are so alive. And the book is undeniably funny.
Then, there are these moments:
"Chance stared at the TV screens. Al-Arabiya TV was showing footage from the scene. Bodies were stacked like cordwood along the pavement. Some were covered with sheets, some were draped in tarps of gold foil (perhaps some building material dug out of the trash nearby). When they ran out of materials to use, mourners just pulled shirts up over the dead faces. Still, as the camera panned along the sidewalk morgue, the breeze lifted the corners of the blankets and the gold foil and the dead looked at Gooding through the camera--the open mouths with their teeth dirtied by river water, the rolled-back eyes, the knitted brows, the look of confusion. A young boy in a T-shirt, flies walking across his eyeballs, reached out his arms for his mother, her face up on the bridge rapidly receding from his field of vision. The camera panned. The buckled limbs, the splayed feet, the hundreds and hundreds of shapeless mounds beneath the sheets: it was almost too much for Gooding to bear."
I can't recommend this novel enough. Or anything that Abrams writes for that matter. I look forward to whatever comes next from this author.
February 18, 2015
In the spirit of openess, I never served, never tried to join, and therefore cannot comment on the accuracy of this fictional account of behind-the-scenes operations in Baghdad. That being said, especially in the case of military-oriented books with a supposedly humorous spin, it really is unfair when writers are compared to the greats of the genre, largely the fault of publishers eager to ring up sales, and Abrams is no Joseph Heller, but this isn't a bad book and does approach things with somewhat the same angle (even making references to CATCH-22). However, it also didn't grab me or entertain me in the same way as the classic did. And although front-line soldiers do look down upon support staff, the book goes out of its way to denigrate their importance (and of course, this is fiction), as if most of them had a choice in where they were assigned. Besides, some people have to do these jobs in the radically different type of war and modern technological advances in communications and engagement. No doubt the characters portrayed are exaggerations of actual people (or more likely combinations of people), but still I wonder if they deserve the opprobrium. It is moderately amusing, and there are some enjoyable moments, but overall I wasn't too impressed. An average read.
September 8, 2012
There's lots of intelligence in the satire of Fobbit. Abrams is an immensely talented writer who knows how to draw the reader in. Where I stumbled with Fobbit, is that there didn't seem to be a strong sense of purpose. At times, the novel felt satirical for satire's sake. That said, Abrams does an excellent job of evoking a sense of place and exposing the absurdities of war and how no matter how mighty an army may be, it is still comprised of mere mortals of men.
April 23, 2018
Stationed in Iraq, at a heavily fortified military camp in the middle of a war zone, our main protagonist is engaged in constant rewrites with a positive spin on casualty reports, for press releases in the USA. This harrowing satire graphically conveys all the absurdity and soul-destroying nature of the cynical bureaucracy surrounding modern warfare, where gallows humour is the only defence against madness and truth is always the first casualty.
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
April 10, 2018
It’s no Catch 22, but it’ll do.
Hypocrisy, Peter’s Law in action, the fatalism that dominates the psyches of soldiers in war, deliberate obfuscation, and pointless death are the themes that tumble and disappear from the page before they fully form. Fobbit seems to want to follow in the footsteps of vehement anti-war media that comes before it, but it falls short. It’s horrific, but not as much so as Full Metal Jacket. It’s funny, but not laugh out loud hilarious like Catch 22, it shows that war is indeed hell, but the novel’s scope is so much more bureaucratic that the hell we inhabit is more along the lines of a DMV waiting room, or an endless PowerPoint presentation than that of the hell of combat.
Still, the characters are complex, and the story chugs along such that you won’t want to put it down. This one is good, but not great.
Hypocrisy, Peter’s Law in action, the fatalism that dominates the psyches of soldiers in war, deliberate obfuscation, and pointless death are the themes that tumble and disappear from the page before they fully form. Fobbit seems to want to follow in the footsteps of vehement anti-war media that comes before it, but it falls short. It’s horrific, but not as much so as Full Metal Jacket. It’s funny, but not laugh out loud hilarious like Catch 22, it shows that war is indeed hell, but the novel’s scope is so much more bureaucratic that the hell we inhabit is more along the lines of a DMV waiting room, or an endless PowerPoint presentation than that of the hell of combat.
Still, the characters are complex, and the story chugs along such that you won’t want to put it down. This one is good, but not great.
August 18, 2012
The recollection of emotion in tranquillity is harder than it looks, especially if the emotions aren’t and aren’t meant to be tranquil. The distance needed for literature vitiates the emotions unless the writer is very skilled. Dave Abrams is very, very skilled.
I’ve known Dave – in the sense in which one knows people who write for the same website – for a fair few years now. I remember when he shipped out, and when he came back; and knowing his talent, I expected great things.
I didn’t expect Fobbit.
Most of the praise for Fobbit has, alas, been filtered through a partisan lens, and a damned cloudy one at that. Well, the hell with that. This is simply a brilliant work, wherever you stand. Dave Abrams has written a very American book about a very American situation, which here happens to be war – or its adjuncts. Well, Dave’s a very American writer. Insofar as all American writers are to some extent regional writers – whatever befalls, Cornelia Read is always an Oyster Bay patrician; I can’t stop being a Southerner, and a Texan to boot – Dave is a Westerner. He has Twain in his veins: the Twain of Roughing It, and indeed of Life on the Mississippi.
But this book transcends incident and the accidents of time and place and nationality, even as war service does in its essentials. There are pages over which the spirits of Kipling’s Soldiers Three – Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd – and of Uncle Toby Shandy and Corporal Trim, seem to hover. And Samuel R. Watkins of Company Aytch, like that young subaltern of 1914, Robert Graves, might marvel at the changes in technology, but he’d be familiar with the military universal, line, support, and service alike, of tedium briefly interrupted by panic, and the nagging knowledge, which Rudyard Kipling also captured, that no one at home knows split beans from coffee about what’s actually going on, and are content to support or oppose it without learning word one about it.
Most of all, though, this is a fictionalized – lightly fictionalized – war service memoir of which the most improbable incidents (to the civilian mind) are, I’d bet, the least fictionalized. And if that sounds familiar, it should: Fobbit is, simply, the equally brilliant American nephew of George MacDonald Fraser’s brilliant McAuslan stories and, still more, his otherwise incomparable Quartered Safe Out Here A Harrowing Tale of World War II. Go forth and read it, and see.
I’ve known Dave – in the sense in which one knows people who write for the same website – for a fair few years now. I remember when he shipped out, and when he came back; and knowing his talent, I expected great things.
I didn’t expect Fobbit.
Most of the praise for Fobbit has, alas, been filtered through a partisan lens, and a damned cloudy one at that. Well, the hell with that. This is simply a brilliant work, wherever you stand. Dave Abrams has written a very American book about a very American situation, which here happens to be war – or its adjuncts. Well, Dave’s a very American writer. Insofar as all American writers are to some extent regional writers – whatever befalls, Cornelia Read is always an Oyster Bay patrician; I can’t stop being a Southerner, and a Texan to boot – Dave is a Westerner. He has Twain in his veins: the Twain of Roughing It, and indeed of Life on the Mississippi.
But this book transcends incident and the accidents of time and place and nationality, even as war service does in its essentials. There are pages over which the spirits of Kipling’s Soldiers Three – Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd – and of Uncle Toby Shandy and Corporal Trim, seem to hover. And Samuel R. Watkins of Company Aytch, like that young subaltern of 1914, Robert Graves, might marvel at the changes in technology, but he’d be familiar with the military universal, line, support, and service alike, of tedium briefly interrupted by panic, and the nagging knowledge, which Rudyard Kipling also captured, that no one at home knows split beans from coffee about what’s actually going on, and are content to support or oppose it without learning word one about it.
Most of all, though, this is a fictionalized – lightly fictionalized – war service memoir of which the most improbable incidents (to the civilian mind) are, I’d bet, the least fictionalized. And if that sounds familiar, it should: Fobbit is, simply, the equally brilliant American nephew of George MacDonald Fraser’s brilliant McAuslan stories and, still more, his otherwise incomparable Quartered Safe Out Here A Harrowing Tale of World War II. Go forth and read it, and see.
October 1, 2012
I really anticipated this book because it was advertised as the Catch 22 for the new generation. Since Catch 22 is one of my favorite books, I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I really didn't like it, and it took me some time to figure out why.
On the surface, it's very similar to Joseph Heller's classic. There's a colorful cast of characters that are all straining against the war in their own ways and challenging our perceptions of what war means. The story is written with the same "tongue-in-cheek" voice, and the chapters are even titled after the primary character of that section. For all intents and purposes, it is Catch 22 written for a different war.
One of the things that I really disliked was the way that every single soldier is portrayed as either incompetent or an idiot. From the overweight staff sergeant that cowers under his desk at every loud noise, to the lieutenant who delivers death notices to his soldiers in the shower, to the general who clips his toenails during meetings, everyone is ridiculously horrible at their job. There isn't a single character in the book that is portrayed as professional or competent at their job. I realize that this is part of the humor and that Catch 22 also did this to a certain extent, but it feels like this book took it to a higher and very insulting level.
Part of this is probably due to the fact that it might be "too soon" for this humor to really be effective. Catch 22 was published about a decade after WWII ended, and I read it long after that. Therefore, there was a large time distance between the book and the events that it wrote about. Reading this book, it felt like the Iraqi war is still too fresh to find much humor in IEDs or the deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
I think the largest difference between this book and Catch 22, however, is the almost complete lack of dialogue. Joseph Heller's characters were in humorous situations, and they did funny things, but the parts that really made me laugh out loud involved the dialogue between the characters. Here, there is very little of that. There is the occasional senior officer yelling at a junior one, and there's a few places where characters will complain to each other, but there's no real back and forth between the soldiers that puts a smile on your face. A good portion of the book is written in diary entries or e-mails home, and the majority of the rest is internal monologue.
It's obvious that my review of this book is tainted by Catch 22, and since the vast majority of the reviewers really seemed to enjoy it, perhaps I was reading it in the wrong mood. It is a book that I had to struggle to finish, however, and it will probably be donated to the library on my next trip.
On the surface, it's very similar to Joseph Heller's classic. There's a colorful cast of characters that are all straining against the war in their own ways and challenging our perceptions of what war means. The story is written with the same "tongue-in-cheek" voice, and the chapters are even titled after the primary character of that section. For all intents and purposes, it is Catch 22 written for a different war.
One of the things that I really disliked was the way that every single soldier is portrayed as either incompetent or an idiot. From the overweight staff sergeant that cowers under his desk at every loud noise, to the lieutenant who delivers death notices to his soldiers in the shower, to the general who clips his toenails during meetings, everyone is ridiculously horrible at their job. There isn't a single character in the book that is portrayed as professional or competent at their job. I realize that this is part of the humor and that Catch 22 also did this to a certain extent, but it feels like this book took it to a higher and very insulting level.
Part of this is probably due to the fact that it might be "too soon" for this humor to really be effective. Catch 22 was published about a decade after WWII ended, and I read it long after that. Therefore, there was a large time distance between the book and the events that it wrote about. Reading this book, it felt like the Iraqi war is still too fresh to find much humor in IEDs or the deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
I think the largest difference between this book and Catch 22, however, is the almost complete lack of dialogue. Joseph Heller's characters were in humorous situations, and they did funny things, but the parts that really made me laugh out loud involved the dialogue between the characters. Here, there is very little of that. There is the occasional senior officer yelling at a junior one, and there's a few places where characters will complain to each other, but there's no real back and forth between the soldiers that puts a smile on your face. A good portion of the book is written in diary entries or e-mails home, and the majority of the rest is internal monologue.
It's obvious that my review of this book is tainted by Catch 22, and since the vast majority of the reviewers really seemed to enjoy it, perhaps I was reading it in the wrong mood. It is a book that I had to struggle to finish, however, and it will probably be donated to the library on my next trip.
not-now
July 1, 2025An incompetent bit of hackwork, chock-full-o' risible metaphors and analogies which, though they are obvious by virtue of being so dumb, the author is sure to explain and repeat. And probably repeat again.
I say this based on two chapters, which is the most one can reasonably expect me to read.
It is, perhaps, well intended. I deduce that its purpose is to express some of the frustration felt by the better soldiers who were thrust into harms way in service of an ill-conceived mission and who feel betrayed by their leadership and misrepresented to the public. But, while the frustration that motivated this book may be genuine, I'm not judging soldiers, I'm judging a book. And this one is bullshit.
It is so overdramatized, and the characters are all cast as types to the extent that one loses faith in the book's potential to represent a reality... any reality. So the book ought to be judged as the work of fiction that it admittedly is (as attested to by the word "novel" on the cover). As a novel, it's trash despite its setting and any claim to topical relevance. It gives virtually no credit to the reader at all. It panders. And it may even be harmful, because in fact there are real veterans (and civilian victims) who surely deserve a better voice than this.
I say this based on two chapters, which is the most one can reasonably expect me to read.
It is, perhaps, well intended. I deduce that its purpose is to express some of the frustration felt by the better soldiers who were thrust into harms way in service of an ill-conceived mission and who feel betrayed by their leadership and misrepresented to the public. But, while the frustration that motivated this book may be genuine, I'm not judging soldiers, I'm judging a book. And this one is bullshit.
It is so overdramatized, and the characters are all cast as types to the extent that one loses faith in the book's potential to represent a reality... any reality. So the book ought to be judged as the work of fiction that it admittedly is (as attested to by the word "novel" on the cover). As a novel, it's trash despite its setting and any claim to topical relevance. It gives virtually no credit to the reader at all. It panders. And it may even be harmful, because in fact there are real veterans (and civilian victims) who surely deserve a better voice than this.
July 16, 2012
FOBBIT by David Abrams is a fantastic masculine satire set during Operation Iraqi Freedom. For those of you who don't know, a Fobbit is a U.S. soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base. Each chapter sets you solidly in the boots of different soldiers and their perceptions of one another as they move through the sand-covered world of Iraq, with mortars flying overhead and situations so ridiculous they're only eclipsed by the fumbling efforts to control the public perception of them.
It's CATCH-22 for our generation, and I won't be the first person to make that comparison. Granted, there's a sly aside in FOBBIT where one of the narrators is reading Heller poolside, but it's a deserved nod and organic to the situation. I had Heller on my mind while reading FOBBIT for sure, but Chuck Palahniuk as well (another great genre-buster to read, b/c hey - none of us write like him). The writing is masculine and gorgeous at the same time, gut-wrenching and mind numbing. Abrams captures the ridiculous and makes the reader want to put their head in their hands right along with his characters.
It's CATCH-22 for our generation, and I won't be the first person to make that comparison. Granted, there's a sly aside in FOBBIT where one of the narrators is reading Heller poolside, but it's a deserved nod and organic to the situation. I had Heller on my mind while reading FOBBIT for sure, but Chuck Palahniuk as well (another great genre-buster to read, b/c hey - none of us write like him). The writing is masculine and gorgeous at the same time, gut-wrenching and mind numbing. Abrams captures the ridiculous and makes the reader want to put their head in their hands right along with his characters.
January 2, 2013
I picked this book up at the bookstore on a whim. I usually enjoy novels about life in the military and about the irrational absurdity of a lot of the things that go on there. This book set out to chronicle the life of "Fobbits" in the U.S. Army. Admittedly, this would be an easy group to satirize. But even with the abdundance of potential material, the author fails to provide a compelling or even marginally entertaining story. The plot is very predictable and the ending was not particularly satisfying. The characters are cartoonish caricatures of military types. The dialog is stilted. The author presents no admirable or even sympathetic characters and attempts to present the entire U.S. military as unworthy of the respect. Maybe it's just too close to the actual events in time to be writing a book like this so close on the heels of the military action in Iraq. I kept on to the end hoping it would improve mainly based on the favorable dust jacket endorsement by Karl Marlantes who wrote Matterhorn and did a much better job of capturing some of the absurdities of war in the life of a marine in the Vietnam War.
November 21, 2024
“Fobbit” by David Abrams has sat unread on my bookshelf for the last eight years. I knew I’d love it and I also knew it’d take me back to Iraq in some small way. This book takes place the same time frame I was there. I wasn’t a Fobbit, thankfully, but I saw a good many of them while deployed. This book hits the nail on the head perfectly painting the whole absurd picture of what it must have been like to be in the rear with the gear so to speak. The characters were fine tuned and believable and you both loved and hated them at the same time. As cliche as it is to compare war novels to the work of O’Brien, I think it’s apt here. All in all a great novel.
August 22, 2012
Fobbit brought back many memories of my military service. David Abrams hit the nail on the head describing life in the military in a war zone. The strain between the warriors and the support staff(fobbits), the idiots and the idiotic procedures. Just remember when you're laughing that even though it's funny, it's still very true. A very good book which I reccommend to anyone interested in what our boys are going through over there. No, for anyone interested in reading a funny yet biting commentary on life in the U.S. military, in a war zone.
First Reads giveaway recipient.
First Reads giveaway recipient.
February 1, 2013
Fobbit is a bold and insightful view of how the banalities of bureaucracy provide only temporary respite from the horrors of war. Satirical, cynical, and thought-provoking, readers will become engrossed by these memorable characters and their shocking, and sometimes fitting, ends.
June 24, 2017
This is the best book I've read in the past year.
Of course, I should say that as an Operation Iraqi Freedom vet from 2005 - when this book is set - I'm the target (ahem) demographic for this.
That said, this captures perfectly my deployment experience, so much so that I was almost beginning to reach for my own rifle, travel around the AO, and decide if I really want to go to the daily BUB...
As a Fobbit myself, this is a perfect picture of the non-door kickers life. Obviously there is SOME (though...not really...) exaggeration for comic effect. I read that this is a comedy, but it's so realistic, I think civilians would assume it's all comedic effect. The writer obviously knows what he's talking about, since he served in the PAO in Iraq (where many of his characters are). I enjoyed that the book comes at the reader first to make fun of Fobbits, but then makes you become part of them and understand/empathize with their lives, and takes it from there.
As cliche as it sounds, I did not want to put this book down and was sad when it ended --- speaking of which, I thought to myself while reading "I'm probably not going to like the ending." Primarily because there's no real story in this book -- which sounds silly, but, much like deployment, there's not one single thread but a series of incidents. And I was disappointed with the ending...but that's fine. I enjoyed this so much, it hurt.
Of course, I should say that as an Operation Iraqi Freedom vet from 2005 - when this book is set - I'm the target (ahem) demographic for this.
That said, this captures perfectly my deployment experience, so much so that I was almost beginning to reach for my own rifle, travel around the AO, and decide if I really want to go to the daily BUB...
As a Fobbit myself, this is a perfect picture of the non-door kickers life. Obviously there is SOME (though...not really...) exaggeration for comic effect. I read that this is a comedy, but it's so realistic, I think civilians would assume it's all comedic effect. The writer obviously knows what he's talking about, since he served in the PAO in Iraq (where many of his characters are). I enjoyed that the book comes at the reader first to make fun of Fobbits, but then makes you become part of them and understand/empathize with their lives, and takes it from there.
As cliche as it sounds, I did not want to put this book down and was sad when it ended --- speaking of which, I thought to myself while reading "I'm probably not going to like the ending." Primarily because there's no real story in this book -- which sounds silly, but, much like deployment, there's not one single thread but a series of incidents. And I was disappointed with the ending...but that's fine. I enjoyed this so much, it hurt.
March 4, 2018
The first half of Fobbit is one of the best satires I’ve read since Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. This satire of the American military in Iraq features excellent writing (Abrams has a much better ear than most writers of satire, who too often focus on content and dialogue), graphic violence (intended to get under your skin, to put you in the protagonists’ place and to make it clear that this is more tragedy than comedy), and a range of protagonists who, for the most part, do not interact too much.
Abrams’ only fault, at least for me, is the common one of not realizing that satire, like most humor (even the darkest humor, as here), should be short. By 3/4 of the way through, I found myself skimming a lot. But the first half is definitely worth the read, and many readers surely will want more rather than less.
Abrams’ only fault, at least for me, is the common one of not realizing that satire, like most humor (even the darkest humor, as here), should be short. By 3/4 of the way through, I found myself skimming a lot. But the first half is definitely worth the read, and many readers surely will want more rather than less.
August 10, 2012
Fobbit, being mainstream satiric fiction, is not my usual fare, but I love M*A*S*H, so the blurb caught my attention when Stefan (Civilian Reader) mentioned picking this up at BEA and I decided to ask for an ARC on Netgalley. I'm glad I did. While the book wasn't completely what I expected – I'd expected satire but not this biting – it was a quick and entertaining read.
The miniature community of a military compound in a combat zone magnifies human character traits, both the good and the bad. Fobbit, being a satire, tends to focus on the bad and ignoble; none of the characters are heroic, only a few are at all likeable, though perhaps some of them are uncomfortably relatable. Shrinkle and Harkleroad are downright awful. Neither of them shows much character growth; in fact their development is rather to their detriment. Shrinkle goes from a well-meaning but misguided klutz to an outright delusional liar and Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad, Harkleroad is a self-aggrandizing, dishonest incompetent. His emails home to his mother are both funny and deeply sad. I liked Lieutenant Colonel Duret and Sergeant Lumley, who seem to be cast in a far more positive light due to their active combat status. Both of them are shown to struggle with their experiences – Duret flees in fantasies of his wife and dog any time the stress gets to be too much and he is plagued by the memory of his brother-in-law who died during the 9/11 attacks – but both do the best they can despite their fears. Gooding is actually an okay guy, despite his not always very brave inner monologue, he's not a bad guy, just one who is out of his depth and mentally bruised and battered by all the death and tragedy he gets across his desk.
The story is told through chapters with alternating viewpoints. Within these chapters we find not only straightforward narrative, but also emails, letters and diary extracts from Gooding's diary. These extracts were my favourite, as their tone seemed sincere and somehow smoother. They formed almost a calm place inside the nervous action of the narrative. There are some passages written from the viewpoint of inanimate objects. While the first of these, from the EOD squad robot, was interesting and not as jarring, because it's easy to anthropomorphise a robot, the later ones, especially the mortar one, just came across as gimmicky and contrived. I also struggled with the extensive use of TLA's, though this may be because as a non-native English speaking civilian American military acronyms are largely unfamiliar to me. I liked that Abrams acknowledged the difficulties civilians have understanding these acronyms tacitly when he has Gooding coach a soldier on how to conduct an interview with the press, instructing him to avoid TLA's as civilians won't understand.
Despite my problems with some of the elements of the book, I did enjoy the writing and especially the dialogue. There was a lot of banter, especially between the combat troops, which was very enjoyable. Abrams creates distinctive voices for the different main characters; I was never confused as to whose viewpoint we were following at any given time. The humour is bleak, sarcastic and bordering on cynical, it's gallows humour of the kind that forces itself to laugh to keep from crying or going mad. The book paints a dark picture of how hard it is to get through a tour unscathed mentally if not physically; it's a sad tale of war, wrapped in a blanket of wry laughter. While funny the book is also thought-provoking as you wonder how much is true and how much satirical hyperbole. It also deepens respect for those men and women – of any nationality – who not only decide to step up and serve, but sign on for return tours as well.
The book is an easy read on a hard subject, but the end, when it came, was abrupt and rather disheartening, but that fit the tale that Abrams has spun the reader with Fobbit perfectly. I enjoyed Fobbit and read it in three sittings. As pointed out above, I did have my problems with it, but in the end Fobbit was an entertaining and thought-provoking read. The book is published by Grove Atlantic under their Black Cat imprint and will be released on September 4th.
The book was provided for review by the publisher.
The miniature community of a military compound in a combat zone magnifies human character traits, both the good and the bad. Fobbit, being a satire, tends to focus on the bad and ignoble; none of the characters are heroic, only a few are at all likeable, though perhaps some of them are uncomfortably relatable. Shrinkle and Harkleroad are downright awful. Neither of them shows much character growth; in fact their development is rather to their detriment. Shrinkle goes from a well-meaning but misguided klutz to an outright delusional liar and Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad, Harkleroad is a self-aggrandizing, dishonest incompetent. His emails home to his mother are both funny and deeply sad. I liked Lieutenant Colonel Duret and Sergeant Lumley, who seem to be cast in a far more positive light due to their active combat status. Both of them are shown to struggle with their experiences – Duret flees in fantasies of his wife and dog any time the stress gets to be too much and he is plagued by the memory of his brother-in-law who died during the 9/11 attacks – but both do the best they can despite their fears. Gooding is actually an okay guy, despite his not always very brave inner monologue, he's not a bad guy, just one who is out of his depth and mentally bruised and battered by all the death and tragedy he gets across his desk.
The story is told through chapters with alternating viewpoints. Within these chapters we find not only straightforward narrative, but also emails, letters and diary extracts from Gooding's diary. These extracts were my favourite, as their tone seemed sincere and somehow smoother. They formed almost a calm place inside the nervous action of the narrative. There are some passages written from the viewpoint of inanimate objects. While the first of these, from the EOD squad robot, was interesting and not as jarring, because it's easy to anthropomorphise a robot, the later ones, especially the mortar one, just came across as gimmicky and contrived. I also struggled with the extensive use of TLA's, though this may be because as a non-native English speaking civilian American military acronyms are largely unfamiliar to me. I liked that Abrams acknowledged the difficulties civilians have understanding these acronyms tacitly when he has Gooding coach a soldier on how to conduct an interview with the press, instructing him to avoid TLA's as civilians won't understand.
Despite my problems with some of the elements of the book, I did enjoy the writing and especially the dialogue. There was a lot of banter, especially between the combat troops, which was very enjoyable. Abrams creates distinctive voices for the different main characters; I was never confused as to whose viewpoint we were following at any given time. The humour is bleak, sarcastic and bordering on cynical, it's gallows humour of the kind that forces itself to laugh to keep from crying or going mad. The book paints a dark picture of how hard it is to get through a tour unscathed mentally if not physically; it's a sad tale of war, wrapped in a blanket of wry laughter. While funny the book is also thought-provoking as you wonder how much is true and how much satirical hyperbole. It also deepens respect for those men and women – of any nationality – who not only decide to step up and serve, but sign on for return tours as well.
The book is an easy read on a hard subject, but the end, when it came, was abrupt and rather disheartening, but that fit the tale that Abrams has spun the reader with Fobbit perfectly. I enjoyed Fobbit and read it in three sittings. As pointed out above, I did have my problems with it, but in the end Fobbit was an entertaining and thought-provoking read. The book is published by Grove Atlantic under their Black Cat imprint and will be released on September 4th.
The book was provided for review by the publisher.
September 12, 2021
Since 2001, about 2,700,000 Americans have served in GWOT in Iraq and Afghanistan, barring some variance in troop levels and official involvement in theater. Contrary to what most people would have you believe, only about 10% (270,000) served in actual combat operations during those 20 years of off-and-on again military activity. What possibly defines the other 90%: FOBBIT.
Fictional Forward Operating Base (FOB) Triumph in Baghdad, aka Camp Cupcake, is the setting, located in the not so fictional Iraq War of 2005 and the quite real Al-Faw Palace that used to be Saddam Hussein's stomping grounds and after the start of hostilities served as headquarters for US Forces (Camp Victory as part of VBC). FOBBIT deals with those who, paraphrasing the New Testament and quoting the author, were in the war but not of the war. Military members, who, for the duration of deployment, scored three hots and a cot and were probably unable to tell the difference between a mosque and a mosquito. Deep inside FOB Triumph is a zany cast of characters, part of which works in the PAO, dealing with the mundane, morbid, and inconceivable that happens to troops in a war zone.
Previous generations of service members dealt with REMFs and the post-2000 crowd, of course, invented a more fitting and less NSFW moniker, paying homage to THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1954) and THE HOBBIT (1937) by J.R.R. Tolkien. Anyone who's ever spent any time in an office environment (either command or corporate), the latter of which of course seems a distant memory since the start of the pandemic of 2020, can appreciate the characters, politics, and shenanigans that are a daily reality at FOB Triumph. The cast of characters shows that they're human, all too human, and amid folly, deal with John Wayne toilet paper, BUBs, Sig Acts, power points and fall headfirst into known unknowns while deliberating philosophical tenets the likes of 'how many licks does it take to get to the center of an insurgency?' Irrespective of the conflict raging outside the wire, and the few mortar and rifle rounds zipping through warrens of CHUs, life goes on, same as always. And sometimes, if you're lucky, life tastes like coconut cream pie.
Despite dealing with the sensitive subjects of wartime Iraq, US casualties, loss, grief, and the endless grind of military life, David Abrams crafted an uproariously entertaining and hilarious novel drawing from his own war time experiences. Much like other stories chronicling war, THE SHORT TIMERS (1979), CATCH-22 (1961), MASH (1968) and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE (1969) come to mind, FOBBIT makes it abundantly clear that even service members are fallible humans and the army makes the simple infinitely complicated. Indubitably clear however, is that FOBBIT is an instant classic, capturing the war zone zeitgeist and carrying it forward for future generations to experience, and should be revisited annually. Venture out and secure a copy, experience an unexpected journey deep into the heart of Iraq, the There and Back Again. It's well worth your time.
August 16, 2012
I won an uncorrected proof of this book in a Goodreads First Reads Giveaway.
I found this book to be a bit hard to get into, even though I had been very eager to start it. The first half of the book seemed to be a jumble of rehashed content, sometimes outlining characters that never (or very briefly) were mentioned again. I could not establish where the plot wanted to take me and became quite tired of hearing about Vic Duret's faceless wife and dog...
After reaching a plateau of sorts, I was glad that I had pushed through the first half, because it started to become more of a cohesive story that I could get behind. The turning point for me was the heavy personal development of Abe Shrinkle's character. I quickly took a liking to this underdog, from his compulsive hoarding to embarrassing cowardice.
I would have liked to see a bit more interplay between the characters; I got the overwhelming feeling while reading that FOB Triumph was an intimate space, yet some mainly outlined characters never crossed paths.
Overall, however, I would say that I enjoyed the read.
I found this book to be a bit hard to get into, even though I had been very eager to start it. The first half of the book seemed to be a jumble of rehashed content, sometimes outlining characters that never (or very briefly) were mentioned again. I could not establish where the plot wanted to take me and became quite tired of hearing about Vic Duret's faceless wife and dog...
After reaching a plateau of sorts, I was glad that I had pushed through the first half, because it started to become more of a cohesive story that I could get behind. The turning point for me was the heavy personal development of Abe Shrinkle's character. I quickly took a liking to this underdog, from his compulsive hoarding to embarrassing cowardice.
I would have liked to see a bit more interplay between the characters; I got the overwhelming feeling while reading that FOB Triumph was an intimate space, yet some mainly outlined characters never crossed paths.
Overall, however, I would say that I enjoyed the read.
March 6, 2012
The Iraq war's version of Catch-22. Abrams uses a small cast of narrators to paint a picture of life for the inhabitants of a Forward Operating Base (hence the title) in Baghdad, rarely venturing into the streets. The constant stream of casualties is conveyed second hand to Public Affairs and reduced to press releases by men whose only sight of blood might be from a botched IV line to correct severe dehydration. Most good war novels convey life in a war zone as long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror...but here, it's just the boredom of men in a combat zone who never see combat and like it that way.
It's hard to describe what this novel is. Those looking for a heroic novel of the Iraq war should look elsewhere (just as those looking for a stirring novel of WWII should skip Catch 22). However, it's a good read, and I suspect it probably does a pretty good job of describing one little corner of the war.
It's hard to describe what this novel is. Those looking for a heroic novel of the Iraq war should look elsewhere (just as those looking for a stirring novel of WWII should skip Catch 22). However, it's a good read, and I suspect it probably does a pretty good job of describing one little corner of the war.
November 26, 2012
Those of us who've been away from the military for a lot of years or who've never had the experience at all need to read this book. We need to be reminded or taught about the devastating fallout from elective wars and the sad absurdity with which they're fought. We need to meet the characters so well represented in these pages--zealots and bigots and incompetents and loafers and liars and sadists and patriots and dutiful plodders and vagrants and shirkers and spongers and drunks and misogynists and everyday conscientious people and yes, even heroes. And it's good to be able to meet them with a smile on your face. Otherwise, it would be too painful (See Jon Krakauer's WHERE MEN WIN GLORY--THE ODYSSEY OF PAT TILLMAN). David Abrams gets the reader to engage with the flawed but human characters of his story even as he lays bare the bones of an obese, misdirected, and largely dysfunctional military.
March 27, 2013
At the beginning of Fobbit, there are several well told The Hurt Locker- type tense scenes, which are very dramatic and powerful. Throughout the book, the gruesomeness of war is evident--the danger, the dying, the maiming. And throughout the book, the absurdity of war is evident as well, particularly at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) where the staff pursues stupid, unproductive activities and waits for redeployment back home.
So the book presents the horrors and absurdities of war. What the book doesn't present is a plot substantial enough to carry my interest. One captain continually acts in ways dumber than the others, and the story explains what will happen to him. But there is not enough plot complexity, character development, or richness of story; and after a few chapters, it's all very thin. Like the war, the book has unrealized potential. Like the soldiers, I just wanted it all to be over.
So the book presents the horrors and absurdities of war. What the book doesn't present is a plot substantial enough to carry my interest. One captain continually acts in ways dumber than the others, and the story explains what will happen to him. But there is not enough plot complexity, character development, or richness of story; and after a few chapters, it's all very thin. Like the war, the book has unrealized potential. Like the soldiers, I just wanted it all to be over.
September 17, 2013
Reviewers have compared this book to Catch-22--as if Catch-22 is a genre. FOBBIT is its own animal. A one-of-a-kind view of our recent wars, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also elsewhere in the world. Like these recent wars, FOBBIT has a hollow center. The war that FOBBIT depicts is not about saving America. It is not about saving civilization. It is a hollow war. And David Abrams has done a superb job of depicting this quality. Whether or not he intended to doesn't matter. He has shown us the hole in the doughnut by writing about what surrounds the hole in the doughnut, and that's what counts. Funny, irreverent, even surly at times, at its core FOBBIT shows us that there is no escaping the essential bleakness of this kind of war. Few die, but no one escapes unscathed. Not even the reader.
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