Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine's Unbecoming

by Lyle Jeremy Rubin

An honest reckoning with the war on terror, masculinity, and the violence of American hegemony abroad, at home, and on the psyche, from a veteran whose convictions came undone When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.  In Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body, Rubin narrates his own undoing, the profound disillusionment that took hold of him on bases in the U.S. and Afghanistan. He both examines his own failings as a participant in a prescribed masculinity and the failings of American empire, examining the racialized and class hierarchies and culture of conquest that constitute the machinery of U.S. imperialism. The result is a searing analysis and the story of one man’s personal and political conversion, told in beautiful prose by an essayist, historian, and veteran transformed. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Military Fiction, Biography, Politics, Biography Memoir, History

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 2022

Reviews

[JDK1962]

I tried. I got to around 40%, then skimmed another 10%, then just gave up. I had a bunch of issues with the book. First, while he clearly has some self-awareness and some regrets, he spent all of the half of the book I read fleshing out the picture of right-wing ideologue pseudo-intellectual misogynist asshole. I can only take so much of that. His political, historical, and economic ramblings came off at the level of an over-earnest college freshman, i.e., you might sit there listening for five minutes, after which you start thinking of ways to convincingly feign death in the hope that he might stop talking. The memoir bits of his experiences in the marines are the strongest bits, but still are difficult to wade through due to a self-conscious writer's voice that knows this past self was kind of repellent, but insists on detailing it anyway, along with his slow realization--that I think was a bit faster for most others--that toxic masculinity and blind patriotism are not actually good things.

[Doctor Baby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fucking great. It's an uncommonly thoughtful and honest reckoning with what it means to willingly participate in something as unforgivable as an American war. The reviewers giving it one star because they picked it up expecting some smug Elliot Ackerman- or Phil Klay-type bullshit are assholes. Basically every war book written by a War on Terror combat vet (especially the ones with faculty positions and NYT profiles and National Book Awards) is dishonest and self-serving and cowardly as all hell. This book is the opposite of all those things. Any former soldier who wants to understand what the hell went wrong — that is, any former soldier who hungers for repair — ought to read it. Any former soldier who just wants smoke blown up their ass should fuck off and read literally anything else.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like listening to that really annoying kid in your freshman politics class talk for eight hours straight.

[Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I served at the exact same time as this story. As a matter of fact, we both deployed at the exact same time to Afghanistan, and the Battalion he was in was right next to mine at the barracks and the SCIF. Super curious if we ever crossed paths. That being said, I am going to legitimately try and not be melodramatic here. This was the best book to come out of the war that I fought in. OEF Vets are entering an interesting time where we are officially pulled out and the reflection period has begun. Veterans are healing and feeling comfortable sharing their stories. This story resonated with me so deeply. I imagine it'll resonate with the vast majority of Veterans, particularly those in the Marine Corps, let alone the Intel field. I haven't read a book this important since Jarhead. Very excited to read this author's other content online and elsewhere. I'm excited for folks who haven't read this story yet, it's quite the journey.

[Patrick Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this book down. I don't usually go for memoirs, but Rubin is an incredibly compelling writer. This book about military service struck me as a brilliant reflection on masculinity, although throughout my reading, I have been stuck wondering whether I am even mature enough to internalize much of this writing. I highly recommend this book and I have a growing list of people that I will now pester into reading it. I came for the anti-imperialism but I stayed for the brilliant characterization of childhood guilts and anxieties that seem fairly universal but hard to pin down, until now.

[Jesi Drake · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I really tried to like this book, I got maybe half way before I completely gave up. As a Marine who got out of the service just under a year ago, I literally couldn't stand his writing. He sounded like SO many of the officers I knew who thought they were better than everyone else. Yes, the Marine Corps wasn't what I expected either. But he also knew what he was getting himself into, I mean it's not like its a secret that book camp is hard...
And almost every single belief or opinion he had I didn't agree with.
Not for me, sorry.

[Kim Hamblin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why so many positive reviews.

Rather than well written, I found it almost unreadable in some of his rants. All of his references in the last chapters about America backing every evil in Central and South America and the Gulf of Mexico will be lost on those of us not knowledgeable about these events. Maybe the Iran-Contra debacle is within the understanding of most of us in superficial ways.

I have to admit that I agree with some of his beliefs about American wars. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were based on wrong perceptions. The Vietnam war was a waste. This should in no way should be construed as criticism of the soldiers and airmen who fought so bravely at such great sacrifice. The father of my stepchildren’s name is inscribed on that wall. They were 3, 4, and 5 when he was killed-a young “butter bar “ lieutenant who lived 3 months in country. The domino theory was not proven true. 50,000 lives in an unwinable war fought with their hands tied by rules of engagement. 50 years later, Vietnam prospers; 50 years later, a former “tunnel rat” goes berserk in a hospital waiting room because he saw a picture of a snake on the cover of a magazine on the table next to him. He crawled into a tunnel with his best friend, who was struck and killed by a Mamba planted in the tunnel by the VC. He had a flashback 50 years later. He was 1 of thousands who came home changed forever by the trauma of the war. Their names don’t appear on that wall, nor do the names of those who lost limbs or had other injuries. PTSD is “invisible “; it leaves no mark, but it is just as damaging to the men who struggle with it. For every such casualty, there are several more in the wives, children, family members, and friends.

This is equally true of the Veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. All 3 wars were fought based on false political beliefs, the latter 2 tainted by the desire for resources. The cost of these 3 wars can’t be calculated. We can cite numbers of killed and wounded, but don’t want to address the cost in equipment and the psychological damage inflicted on veterans and their families. The cost in disability benefits is high and continues month by month. The cost economically in lost productivity has to be added.

All of this to say that we thrust young men into wars in countries whose cultures we didn’t understand trying to democratize a population that didn’t want it or couldn’t achieve it because of warring factions within the countries that had been fighting for generations and will continue to fight.

Somehow, in lesser conflicts, we seem to always pick the wrong people to support. I agree with these arguments, but they are not new.

The thing that bothered me most was the characterization of theUS as imperialist. I don’t believe we seek an empire. I feel sure that there are people who would gladly invite Rubin to leave the country.

We do want to lead. We do want to protect the democracies in the world and hope to spread democracy, but I can’t see any quest for an empire. As an aside, we are struggling to protect our own democracy. Greed is destroying the country.

I think Rubin’s feelings about the wars and their objectives are shared by many of our returning soldiers. They don’t believe we should have been there. We finally killed Ben Laden, but there are scores more just like him. Terrorism has not been quashed. We still have to be vigilant.

I finished the book, but thought of putting it down daily. I can’t recommend it.

[Rene Saller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyle Jeremy Rubin's memoir is difficult to read sometimes--and it's meant to be. He set out to describe an intellectual and spiritual transformation, what he calls an unbecoming, and he succeeds, but this means that we also bumble along with him, struggling through the complexities of empire and patriarchy under late capitalism. Being a Marine is often boring, and sometimes we suffer through stretches I assume are there in the spirit of verisimilitude. At times Rubin's voice is self-excoriating to a fault, although I appreciated his candor. I didn't detect a tone of false modesty, especially when he quoted his ex-girlfriend Leah, who screamed at him for being self-serving, a charge he accepts (and reproduces in the novel, taking the penance to a whole other level). There are several moments like that, where Rubin reveals his own base motives and narcissism.

All that mea culpa-ing on most every page might strike some readers as confessional masochism (is there any other kind? I jest!), or perhaps exhibitionism, but I think Rubin is serving a higher purpose here. His goal is to show the way men like himself--and men who are not much like himself, insofar as he was unusually privileged, a contrast he noticed more and more in his class awakening as an officer--are enculturated, conditioned to reproduce the same sick values that compel our country to wage illegal wars and immiserate millions. You might say Rubin makes of himself a kind of synecdoche for U.S. imperialism, and I find that to be a profoundly optimistic notion: this is, after all, an unbecoming. If it's possible for Rubin to change, to question the consent-manufacturing apparatus that caused him to enlist and that brought us the foreverwars and its myriad profiteers, if he could learn to value compassion over aggression in all parts of his life, maybe, just maybe, it's possible for the country that produced him, which is to say you and me and the handful of other people who might read this, to unbecome also.

[Ross Caputi · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a former Marine, I can say that Rubin nails it. He offers brilliant description of Marine Corps culture and the culture of masculinity that runs through it. Unlike so many other veteran memoirs, Rubin doesn't take any assumptions for granted. He guides us through a rigorous interrogation of the belief system that lead him to the Corps and to war. There are no tough-guy battle scenes, here. No self-congratulatory, triumphalist retelling of victories. It's just an honest interrogation of the beliefs that brought so many of us to war.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me. Lots of Marines as imperialist tools rhetoric. Maybe author went to reeducation camp.

[Megan H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rubin's critical self-reflection about his path from conservative marine looking to "get some," into anti-war advocate reveals how the U.S. war industry eats its young. You couldn't torture some of Rubin's confessions out of me, but I do commend his honesty and appreciate the way his candor exemplifies any individual's internal contradictions.

I could have done without the meta narrative about how Rubin came to remember each piece of the story; the constant asides dilute the emotional impact each moment could have held. Additionally, many parts of the book felt unfocused. There were paragraphs that felt more appropriate for an academic article than this memoir. I appreciate his analysis and the historical context he provides, but the delivery of most of these tidbits were written with a jarringly different tone and sandwiched between storytime memories. The book lacked flow.

These criticisms tempted me to rate the book lower, but at the end of the day I was moved by Lyle J Rubin's story and will likely ponder his ideas as I assess my own relationship to American empire. I look forward to reading more of his pieces.

[mia hattaway · Rating 4 out of 5]

damn near perfect book. it’s very dense in its content, so it felt like it took forever to read, but it’s necessary content. everyone around me is so annoyed from how much i’ve been talking about it

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine’s Unbecoming by Lyle Jeremy Rubin (Bold Type Books 2022) (Biography) (3951).

Author and former Marine Corps officer Lyle Jeremy Rubin has written a memoir concerning his time in the US armed forces. He enlisted as a “gung-ho” recruit and an unquestioning patriot. The book consists of many pages of musings about his own perceived personal failings and deficiencies, and along the way he becomes disillusioned about America’s place among the world’s leading cultures and our standing among the world order.

This is one angst-filled memoir.

Though the author loved the USA enough to volunteer for years of military service, Rubin has written this account from his perspective as a member of the wealthy intellectual Jewish elite in America. It would be misleading to imply that he wrote this memoir from any other perspective, for he proudly proclaimed and celebrated his Jewish heritage on page after page.

Suffice it to say that Rubin lost his taste for military service based on his own personal observations while on active duty. After a lifetime of smugly believing that the USA wore the whitest of white hats among the world’s nations, he changed his mind after he became a small cog in the US military-industrial complex.

This is the story of how the author’s worldview was deconstructed. Sadly, this is a disjointed and awkwardly-told tale.

The author opens this memoir by a brief summation of his pre-military life and then moves to an account of his military training. The book then makes a jarring segue; it reprints a chunk from the author’s journal of his time as a Marine in Afghanistan with boots on the ground. The book then concludes with an extended passage about Rubin’s interview with his ninety-plus year old grandfather.

Throughout the entire book, the author shares his philosophical journey. He deconstructs the arguments and writings of numerous existential philosophers which have provoked his own thoughts and ideas. This reader came to recognize that the path the author was leading his audience down was simply a deconstruction and recounting of the author’s own regrets, self-doubts. and self-recriminations.

I did not care for the author’s approach nor would I recommend this book to other readers. The author’s reference to the Marine Corps in the book’s title baited this fan of military history into picking up what turned out to be an account of the author’s personal philosophical journey. And stories of someone’s “personal philosophical journey” bore me to distraction. (These accounts are like noses, as they say; everybody’s got one of their own.)

Here’s one good piece of trivia from Rubin, though I have no idea whether or not this is true. According to the author, all soldiers fall into one of two types: the killers, who are known as GRUNTs (which stands for General Replacement Unit - Not Trained), and the supporting staff, who are known as POGs (which stands for “Persons Other Than Grunts”). (p.160).

My rating: 7/10, finished 5/17/24 (3951).

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir that I feel would have been immensely better had the author written it a few years later. Good when talking about events and thoughts at the time. Bad when injecting his current beliefs into sections that should be about his old beliefs.

Most of us go through a time where we realize that a large part of our world is a lie. Usually, the time immediately after leads to a strong impassioned rebellion against those ideas. Coupled with a quick haphazard consumption of any and all ideas that fit the new framework of belief that you've decided fits you better. After some time, this new framework becomes a part of you and gets the chance to grow along with you. Often that initial passion fades and the ideas both new and old congeal into your new personal philosophy. The hatred may also cool as you become more confident in your new self. The old ideas are now something to laugh at or regret rather than hate. Perhaps you even gain a nostalgia for the old ideas. See how others can believe them though you never can again.

This memoir seems like one where the author wrote it still in the early stages of discovery. His old ideas are hated and his new ideas are wonderful but undigested. He started life as an arrogant conservative kid who thought his political beliefs, education, gender, and nationality made him better than everyone else. At the time of writing he seems like a nascent leftist or social democrat who thinks his political beliefs and education make him better than everyone else. Progress, but still holding on to his arrogance tightly.

My disappointment in this book was also that I wanted it to be something I could recommend to friends who aren't familiar with leftist ideas that don't mesh with the pro US military propaganda machine. What I got was the author mentioning these ideas from the very start without a ton of explanation on how he got there, leaving them feeling forced and alien. He doesn't explain the sequence of events that led to these ideas coming to fruition in his mind. He quotes them wholesale. This would have been fine had he built up to it more, but here it just feels like preaching to the choir. Presenting his new self like a peacock to be praised.

[Matthew Petti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like many troops, Lyle Jeremy Rubin came to regret his participation in war. Unlike other troops, through, he had quite a unique path to getting there. Rubin was a dyed-in-the-wool ideological neoconservative brought up in a suburban Jewish household, which made him exceptionally well-read and politically conscious. He essentially ended up making the classical neocon journey in reverse, from small-l liberal imperialism to the dissident left.

While his experiences give him a unique perspective — in addition to his life story, Rubin served in a signals intelligence unit, eavesdropping on Afghans — his writing style gets in the way of expressing that perspective. The book jumps between a chronological narrative of his life, historical anecdotes, and political diatribes, often in the tone of a teenager discovering anarchism for the first time. And if there's anything worse than wallowing in guilty and self-pity, it's wallowing in the guilt about feeling guilty, which happens over and over.

The most interesting parts of the book were, at least from a civilian's perspective, Rubin's reflections on boot camp and diary-style descriptions of fighting in Afghanistan. His anthropological knack for describing people really shines through here. Warfare brings together people from radically different walks of life; the tragedy is that this mixing is violent, both in terms of killing the enemy and bonding with your brothers in arms through strict hierarchy. If you want to get the best out of this book, skip the self-psychoanalysis and political sermons for Rubin's direct experience with war.

[Chris Tolve · Rating 5 out of 5]

War is sex. Empire is sex. Violence is sex.

"In time I came to spot resemblances between how marines talked about these sexual experiences and how they talked about their deployments. I even came to see the latter as just a scaled-up version of the former. Instead of a single person, we’d objectify entire peoples and places.”

"The words that cling to war and its participants—its performers—gather around the same motif. We all became, at one point or another, fucknuggets or fucksticks. We fucked the shit out of our girls back home and fucked shit up in training or in Afghanistan. When things got fucked, we called it a clusterfuck or a circle jerk. We humped with a load, hoping to get some action. If you were a virginal newbie in the Army, you were a cherry. If the bad guy was wounded and bloody and dying to escape, he was a squirter. Sometimes warfighters were inserted. Sometimes they withdrew or pulled out. Sometimes they harassed others with their bang-bangs. Sometimes others harassed them with theirs. There were frontal assaults and rearguards, bombshells and cruises and straight shots. Deployed marines destroyed the enemy. Stateside marines destroyed their conquests. If you conquered an Air Force girl, she became a cockpit. Everyone was sucking the big weenie in the suckiness and the suck. Everyone was getting fucked by the green weenie in the suck. It was all fuck-fuck games before the suck and after the suck and during the suck. And everything worth anything was war porn.”

[Sara Broad · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body" by Lyle Rubin is the author's memoir that focuses on his time in the Marines and the change that occurs within him because of it. Rubin enters the Marines as a strong conservative, but through his service in the Middle East and first-hand experience with the American war machine, he eventually sees America as an imperialist, racist, classist society. Rubin also discusses the expectations of masculinity both as an American man and especially within the Marines. Rubin's story was interesting, and I enjoyed how he intertwined his Jewish faith within the memoir and how it impacted his time as Marine. I found many poignant moments, but I did often ask myself the purpose of how in-depth some of the book went and how that took away from the ultimate points Rubin was trying to make.

[David Heilker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Rubin's debut book, "Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine's Unbecoming" deconstructs stereotype, masculinity, sexuality, and machismo at the highest physical and psychic levels – the project of imperialism, and the impacts that project has on the individuals conscripted to carry it out.

As both a memoir and a thesis, "Pain..." lays bare the local and global consequences of empire, endless war, and the radical dehumanization of the soldiers on either side of the battlefield.

Excellently written, well-paced, and deeply grounded. I look forward to the author's future forays.

[Rachelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pain is Weakness... a book that is part memoir, part short-story, it has very interesting sections and some parts that make me confused. I guess I expected the book to be more about going to war and a Marine's life, but it felt like the author complained about the training process and judged other recruits for their shortcomings. He didn't do a great job of making the marines seem like a good career choice. I didn't love the writing style and didn't understand why the negative aspects of marine lifestyle were highlighted.

[Bernardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyle Jeremy Rubin's memoir is so enthralling. It is a political, ideological, literary and personal tour-de-force. This book interweaves his personal story with the history of the US empire. In pursuing self-inquiry, Rubin questions more than just himself, but his society, the institutions that uphold it, and the world it has forged and his role in all of this. I never considered being a soldier but I am a man in the west, a citizen of the global south which bore the consequences of US imperialism, and a student of US foreign policy, and so this book spoke to me on many levels.

[Arielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably wasn't the target audience for this book. I thought it was thoughtful, but I could have used some more hand-holding in parts - philosophical and military, both. A notes section might have been helpful in bringing me along with some of the ideas sprinkled into the text. As it was, I found it most engaging when Lyle was reflecting on his own experiences - what brought him to enlist and the aftermath, particularly (and I wish we would have seen more of the after). I can see how if you've been in this world, the whole of it might feel more tangible and compelling.

[Derek Dexheimer · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Rubin does provide genuine and sophisticated insights into America's always having been Sparta, his narrative is too muddled and contradictory to land. The various threads--rich kid escaping and then coming to terms with an abusive family, neo-conservative intellectualizing, exacting descriptions of boot camp, even more exacting descriptions of the times out of various trainings which includes a long digression into an expensive night with a prostitute, never comes together. Rubin comes off as sanctimonious and self-aggrandizing, and his insights are lost.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part military memoir, part political rant. The book is schizophrenic and taxes the reader with its tedious toggling between the themes of Semper Fi versus a neo-leftist critique of American cruelty and imperialism. I found it too preachy and rambling. "Sanctimonious ranting is incoherence leaving your keyboard..."

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the author hits on some interesting points throughout his reflections on his time in the Marines. Some of the narrative strands don’t always hit, or tie back the way I’m guessing that he was hoping. But, overall, it’s a good tight read that is a welcome respite from the MCU-esque hagiography that other members of the military traffic in.

[Caitlin Gugliotta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty good. I like a memoir. The author’s train of thought was hard to follow at times and he tended toward the long-winded and whimsical. However, you could really feel his growth from young, entitled jerk to older, less entitled human, which really is what kept me reading.

[Fran Germinaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written, very explicit story of the life of a Devil Dog. I will admit I needed a thesaurus by my side to understand some of the words I have never seen before. Love the title. Same words on a t-shirt I wear.

[Lucas Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars maybe 3. So many unrelated tangents to his own story. I thought I was going to be reading more about his experiences and not so much history

[Kittie012 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This as a really painful book to read because it was self aware. That’s what makes it so excellent. I look forward to reading more from this author!

[Todd Pinchevsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird book. I kind of feel like it was a memoir of depression.

[vs · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times a bit overwritten and discursive but overall an important and deeply honest book about manhood, the military and America.