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Charlie Johnson in the Flames
Michale Ignatieff is a profound meditation on war, guilt and one man's search for justice by one of our most important moral, ethical and political thinkers.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Michael Ignatieff
71 books152 followersMichael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 12, 2011
I read it in a day. It's a succinct story; it's blunt. The tone is vivid and quick -- action, reaction, abreaction ... Author Michael Ignatieff may not have aspired to the heights he wanted as a politician, but he's a fine, visceral writer. The whole tone of the book is alarm -- which is the state that Charlie Johnson lives in. He's a war correspondent, and he's in Bosnia, c. 1993 ...
The immediate pace of the story, and its telling through Charlie, introduce the reader into the minutae of trauma, survival, and the infinite aftermaths ...
Quotes:
All they had in common was the knowledge of what they had been through.
... a woman in tatters leading them to safety in the dark.
It was clear that the scene they had lived through would remain unmastered as long as he lived ...
... his enraging neatness ...
... he would either return to his life or blow it up.
... he was back there, really back there, with the story inside him needing to be pulled out, like some infected splinter.
The mention of her name was cold and clarifying.
'We suffer from too much experience,' Jacek said once. 'We have more than we know what to do with.'
... his eerie helplessness.
All Jacek ever said about [his wife] was that she was .... 'the principle of my existence.'
So this was what bound them together, faith in each other's animal instincts.
What was poignant was the look in his eyes, as if he was truly helpless in the face of knowledge and the obligation to disclose it.
When he was like this, with the hard look in his eye, she knew she was powerless to stop him sweeping everything away, all the strands they had weaved together between them in the night, like a man pushing a cobweb off his face.
She had the wry look on her face. 'My war correspondent husband,' she began, 'the guy who gets shot at for a living and he can't hack dinner with Rae and Barbara ...'
He had chosen his redemption, and there was nothing to regret about that, she thought, except that it was also an act of desertion. One night, she stood alone in the bedroom, in her dressing gown, and she reached down and undid the belt, as she had once done to fold him in, and then since the room was empty, as all rooms now were, she felt the full weight of her desolation.
... they were the only ones who would understand why listening was a necessary office of friendship and an act of witness to the love they had all felt for the man whose face, voice, touch of hands, smell of skin, was fading inexorably from their memories.
The immediate pace of the story, and its telling through Charlie, introduce the reader into the minutae of trauma, survival, and the infinite aftermaths ...
Quotes:
All they had in common was the knowledge of what they had been through.
... a woman in tatters leading them to safety in the dark.
It was clear that the scene they had lived through would remain unmastered as long as he lived ...
... his enraging neatness ...
... he would either return to his life or blow it up.
... he was back there, really back there, with the story inside him needing to be pulled out, like some infected splinter.
The mention of her name was cold and clarifying.
'We suffer from too much experience,' Jacek said once. 'We have more than we know what to do with.'
... his eerie helplessness.
All Jacek ever said about [his wife] was that she was .... 'the principle of my existence.'
So this was what bound them together, faith in each other's animal instincts.
What was poignant was the look in his eyes, as if he was truly helpless in the face of knowledge and the obligation to disclose it.
When he was like this, with the hard look in his eye, she knew she was powerless to stop him sweeping everything away, all the strands they had weaved together between them in the night, like a man pushing a cobweb off his face.
She had the wry look on her face. 'My war correspondent husband,' she began, 'the guy who gets shot at for a living and he can't hack dinner with Rae and Barbara ...'
He had chosen his redemption, and there was nothing to regret about that, she thought, except that it was also an act of desertion. One night, she stood alone in the bedroom, in her dressing gown, and she reached down and undid the belt, as she had once done to fold him in, and then since the room was empty, as all rooms now were, she felt the full weight of her desolation.
... they were the only ones who would understand why listening was a necessary office of friendship and an act of witness to the love they had all felt for the man whose face, voice, touch of hands, smell of skin, was fading inexorably from their memories.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 4, 2011
"Charlie Johnson" chronicles a war reporter who becomes completely self-destructive after being traumatized by the brutality of multiple endless wars. The book has a lot of potential and is very interesting but comes off somewhat self-indulged. The war reporters are all stereotypical callous, seasoned veterans and it takes a woman burning to death to allow one reporter to realize what he witnesses is real. Of course, once he does that he can't tolerate travelling from war zone to war zone with no real sense of justice or context, but simply a job assignment to get footage of the carnage. It's in this sense that it feels self-indulged. The main character has many more options than those he captures on film. He also has much more recourse to conduct true investigations of these wars and crimes and to pursue justice. Rather than doing any of that he plays callous reporter for the majority of his life and then basically commits suicide in an attempt at misguided heroism. The woman who died in his arms, and awakened his conscience, becomes his martyred woman who he must avenge, which is also condescending and troubling.
Oddly, given all this drama it's really hard to engage in the story in the initial chapters. My expectations are most likely too high, but it really angers me to hear these complaints from a man with total mobility and access and recourse. This man wasn't left to die in a remote war zone, like most of the people on his film footage. He didn't have to drive himself to insanity, yet he did. Obviously, this man was damaged before becoming a war reporter. If the story was simply about that and not with the horrors of war as a backdrop, in a way it probably would have been easier to stomach. But juxtaposing his neurosis against people struggling to survive just felt really wrong.
Oddly, given all this drama it's really hard to engage in the story in the initial chapters. My expectations are most likely too high, but it really angers me to hear these complaints from a man with total mobility and access and recourse. This man wasn't left to die in a remote war zone, like most of the people on his film footage. He didn't have to drive himself to insanity, yet he did. Obviously, this man was damaged before becoming a war reporter. If the story was simply about that and not with the horrors of war as a backdrop, in a way it probably would have been easier to stomach. But juxtaposing his neurosis against people struggling to survive just felt really wrong.
February 16, 2012
I am aware of Ignatieff's non-fiction work but didn't realize he has written 3 novels (one of which was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1993 - Scar Tissue). I found this book in the library in my building. Although 157 pages long it reads like a short story: succinct, precise and impactful. I shouldn't be, but I was surprised to find it extremely well written. He gives a very real glimpse into the machinery of war and the symbiotic relationship between it and the media.
July 30, 2024
In this novella published in 2003, Ignatieff introduces his readers to Charlie Johnson, a veteran but world-weary television news correspondent in the Balkans in the 1990s. For years Charlie has distanced himself from his family, feeling more at home in the war town countryside and seedy hotel bars from which he reports. He is in his fifties, a man who feels he has done a good job over the years bringing the reality, brutality and violence of war-torn countries home, so the world might be more fully informed. As he covers a new conflict somewhere in Yugoslavia, the woman who had provided him and his Polish cameraman Jacek with shelter, is grabbed by soldiers and doused in gasoline. A Serbian Colonel then pulls out his cigarette lighter, flicks it on and casually sets her aflame. She runs towards Charlie who emerges from his hiding place, catches her and rolls her on the ground, dousing the flames and burning his hands in the process. When she dies, Charlie who does not even know the woman’s name, feels responsible and traumatized, unable to get the memory of that horrific event out head. He returns home and becomes depressed as the brutal memory continues to haunt him, playing over and over in an endless loop in his head. Feeling responsible for the young woman’s death, he becomes obsessed with seeking revenge, no matter what the cost.
He returns to the country and hides out in a farm, ruminating over and over about inflicting serious physical harm on the Colonel who carried out the heinous deed. He joins up with a fixer named Buddy, to locate the Colonel and does, with not so surprising results.
Ignatieff fills his narrative with the moral questions many reporters consider as they gather the news from war torn countries back to a world often unprepared to receive it and uncertain what to do with it. Seeking the truth and communicating its ugly reality is difficult work that comes with a cost. Exposure to the constant brutality cannot help but affect those who although on the fringes, see and in some way experience it. However , hat Ignatieff adds in this piece, is the complication of an individual seeking revenge after witnessing a war crime, which changes the moral ledger in the equation.
Ignatieff is uniquely qualified to write about this subject, given his teaching experience at Harvard and his past writing on the morality and ethics of war. His strongest writing in this book is most evident in the sections describing Charlie’s past, what he has seen and experienced over thirty years of reporting. These short scenes are vivid and do not make for easy reading as they describe the offhand, indifferent and careless acts of cruelty and depravity that are part of war. In one scene he describes a woman who unknowingly walks into an ambush, another describes a young boy in Kabul, high on weed, dancing in the street, firing a weapon and spraying bullets everywhere. There is also Charlie’s close encounter with traumatic injury when he escaped by just fractions of an inch, when luck was on his side, leaving him to always wonder whether he really deserved such incredible luck.
Ignatieff has less success describing Charlie’s life on the home front, his neglected family, his affair with a co-worker and the parts of the narrative Ignatieff has used to provide a wider context to Charlie’s struggles. But the story gets back on track when Charlie returns to the war and joins up with a fixer named Buddy to help him find the Colonel and exact his revenge. The novel then ends as readers expect it will.
This is a tale of revenge and redemption, Ignatieff’s attempt to explore the moral and ethical questions raised by war, the death that comes to those who fight and the inevitable collateral damage that results. It is the same, no matter what the era or the country where the conflict occurs.
This is a thoughtful piece of writing that raises much to think about.
He returns to the country and hides out in a farm, ruminating over and over about inflicting serious physical harm on the Colonel who carried out the heinous deed. He joins up with a fixer named Buddy, to locate the Colonel and does, with not so surprising results.
Ignatieff fills his narrative with the moral questions many reporters consider as they gather the news from war torn countries back to a world often unprepared to receive it and uncertain what to do with it. Seeking the truth and communicating its ugly reality is difficult work that comes with a cost. Exposure to the constant brutality cannot help but affect those who although on the fringes, see and in some way experience it. However , hat Ignatieff adds in this piece, is the complication of an individual seeking revenge after witnessing a war crime, which changes the moral ledger in the equation.
Ignatieff is uniquely qualified to write about this subject, given his teaching experience at Harvard and his past writing on the morality and ethics of war. His strongest writing in this book is most evident in the sections describing Charlie’s past, what he has seen and experienced over thirty years of reporting. These short scenes are vivid and do not make for easy reading as they describe the offhand, indifferent and careless acts of cruelty and depravity that are part of war. In one scene he describes a woman who unknowingly walks into an ambush, another describes a young boy in Kabul, high on weed, dancing in the street, firing a weapon and spraying bullets everywhere. There is also Charlie’s close encounter with traumatic injury when he escaped by just fractions of an inch, when luck was on his side, leaving him to always wonder whether he really deserved such incredible luck.
Ignatieff has less success describing Charlie’s life on the home front, his neglected family, his affair with a co-worker and the parts of the narrative Ignatieff has used to provide a wider context to Charlie’s struggles. But the story gets back on track when Charlie returns to the war and joins up with a fixer named Buddy to help him find the Colonel and exact his revenge. The novel then ends as readers expect it will.
This is a tale of revenge and redemption, Ignatieff’s attempt to explore the moral and ethical questions raised by war, the death that comes to those who fight and the inevitable collateral damage that results. It is the same, no matter what the era or the country where the conflict occurs.
This is a thoughtful piece of writing that raises much to think about.
February 5, 2021
Is life always full of surprises? Mr. Ignatieff, being the kind of a celebrity in political journalism and later in politics got a grip on a written word, controversy and polemics. His book "Virtual War" was a clear evidence of understanding of modern warfare principles and full of prognosis, and most of them came true in recent years.
This particular book is a fiction. Ignatieff wrote it in 2002, and the book unveils the story of emotionally unstable London reporter in his fifties. It evolves around Balkan war and its aftermath. Please don’t be surprised at the absence absence of easy-flowing language or slowly developing plot, or uninteresting ending, because fiction is not a strong point of Ignatieff. Better read his other stuff.
How this book happened to be on my shelf - that's the other surprise story! It was bought in a small book shop in St Andrews, a small Scottish town on the coast, former prominent religious center. It was 2004, and I had bought it as the birthday present to my flatmate, a Scottish guy, who started reading it, but later run away from the landlord (he never payed the rent) and left a lot of stuff behind, including the book.
This particular book is a fiction. Ignatieff wrote it in 2002, and the book unveils the story of emotionally unstable London reporter in his fifties. It evolves around Balkan war and its aftermath. Please don’t be surprised at the absence absence of easy-flowing language or slowly developing plot, or uninteresting ending, because fiction is not a strong point of Ignatieff. Better read his other stuff.
How this book happened to be on my shelf - that's the other surprise story! It was bought in a small book shop in St Andrews, a small Scottish town on the coast, former prominent religious center. It was 2004, and I had bought it as the birthday present to my flatmate, a Scottish guy, who started reading it, but later run away from the landlord (he never payed the rent) and left a lot of stuff behind, including the book.
December 19, 2021
Discrete, well-crafted story that has a beginning, well-paced middle, and an ending. No loose ends straying out from the tight, economical prose. The trite wife and daughter characters are unnecessarily, star-losingly weak, though the dinner scene is well-rendered. More cerebral than cinematic, though that likely does not match the intention.
January 24, 2010
This book was awesome! It's made even better by the fact that it was written by the leader of the Liberal party in Canada, Michael Ignatieff, who was a Harvard professor for many years before returning to Canada. He may be the next prime minister because the Liberals are always contenders to run the government (it's the center-left party and considered by many to be the "natural ruling party" of Canada). This is a moving portrayal of war and trauma in a novella form. It's really great and now I like this guy MUCH more than how he appears on tv.
August 26, 2018
This was a great little read. Its a short and pithy hard hitting book about the life of a war correspondent and touches on some thought provoking issues around the immersion of journalists in war zones and their role as witness or something more. This is done in in the portrayal of one specific incident, the unfolding atrocity and subsequent fallout. It is well written and keeps you absorbed until the end. Enjoyed it but it comes with a health warning, it is not easy reading due to the subject matter.
April 27, 2016
Met name het intro geeft een schokkend beeld van de Balkan tijdens de vele burgeroorlogen daar. Ook wat oorlogverslaggeving met een journalist kan doen is treffend beschreven. De manier waarop de journalist zijn verhaal gaat halen is minder logisch en daardoor teveel een James Bond sluitstuk.
July 8, 2013
A cleanly written novel about messy characters with sad lives.
August 29, 2014
The rather detached style of writing is redeemed by the story itself. I can't decide whether or not I would recommend the book to anyone.
December 17, 2014
There was potential for this story to be really good. It ends too early
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews