David abrams fobbit biography
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Or so they convinced themselves.
Supply clerks, motor pool mechanics, cooks, mail sorters, lawyers, trombone players, logisticians: Fobbits, one and all. The tipping point. They didn’t give a shit about appearances. Like the majority of Fobbits, this filled him with equal parts dread and annoyance—fear of being killed at any moment, yes; but also irritation at the fact he was now on what felt like a year-long camping trip with all the comforts of home (flush toilets, cable TV, sand-free bedsheets) stripped away.
They cowered like rabbits in their cubicles, busied themselves with PowerPoint briefings to avoid the hazard of Baghdad’s bombs, and steadfastly clung white-knuckled to their desks at Forward Operating Base Triumph. 13, 2012: B&N in Billings, MT
Sept. His tours of duty took him to Thailand, Japan, Africa, Alaska, Texas, Georgia and The Pentagon.
As for Fobbits?
8, 2012: Powell's in Portland, OR
Oct. It is a necessary collection, necessary to write, necessary to read.” -- E.L. Doctorow
“I've been waiting for this book for a decade. With his neat-pressed uniform, a pale-green pallor from fluorescent lights, and the dust collected around the barrel of his M-16 rifle, he was the poster child for the stay-back-stay-safe soldier.
No thanks! To be a “Fobbit” or “Fobber” or “Fob Dog” was the same as calling someone a dickless, lily-livered desk jockey back in the States. It was also featured as part of B&N's Discover Great New Writers program. His job was to turn the bomb attacks, the sniper kills, the sucking chest wounds, and the dismemberments into something palatable—ideally, something patriotic—which the American public could stomach as they browsed the morning newspaper with their toast and eggs.
Halfway there. His PAO days were filled with sifting through reports of Significant Activities and then writing press releases about what he found there.
Fobbit
They were Fobbits because, at the core, they were nothing but marshmallow. If the FOB was a mother’s skirt, then these soldiers were pressed hard against the pleats, too scared to venture beyond her grasp.
Like the shy, hairy-footed Hobbits of Tolkien’s world, they were reluctant to venture beyond their Shire, bristled with rolls of concertina wire at the borders of the FOB.
After all, there were Orcs in turbans out there! To paraphrase the New Testament, he was in the war but he was not of the war.
On the day a soldier was roasted in the fire of an IED in al-Karkh and then, in a separate attack, a suicide bomber rammed into the back of an Abrams tank, Gooding’s deployment clock was at 183 days with another 182 days to go (plus or minus 60 days, depending on extension orders which could come from the Pentagon at any minute, triggering an increase in suicide attempts, raids on the stash of contraband vodka concealed behind the false wall of a certain NCO’s wall locker, and furious bouts of masturbation).
The Fobbit life is the life for me, they’d singsong to each other with sly winks.
David Abrams’ debut novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2012 and a Best Book of 2012 by Paste Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Barnes and Noble.
A Shit.
They were all Fobbits, everyone who worked in this palace—with the exception of a few foolhardy officers gunning for promotion who grabbed every opportunity to ride on patrols to water treatment plants, school renovations and neighborhood council meetings in the Baghdad suburbs.