Wolff Story and More

Tobias Wolff has a genuinely bold new story in The New Yorker that offers a glimpse at the life of a gay U.S. career soldier who has been stationed in Iraq.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/

Here's a brief excerpt:

"Morse knew that he belonged where he was, yet he had often put himself in danger of scandal and discharge through risky attachments. Just before his tour in Iraq, there’d been the Cuban waiter he met in a restaurant downtown; the waiter turned out to be married, and a gambling addict, and, finally, when Morse broke it off, a blackmailer. Morse would not be blackmailed. He wrote down his commanding officer’s name and telephone number. “Here,” he said, “go on, call him”—and though he didn’t think the man would actually do it, Morse spent the next few weeks inwardly hunched as if against a blow. Then he shipped out and soon came to life again, ready for the next excitement."

There's also an interesting Slate story about the 1997 Hanif Kureishi movie "My Son the Fanatic" (which also originated as a story in The New Yorker, incidentally) and how it might be able to tell us something regarding the following question: "How could apparently assimilated, British-born Muslims end up stuffing bombs into their backpacks and murdering dozens of their compatriots in the Tube and on a London double-decker bus?" I hadn't realized it until this article, but we in the U.S. have 9/11 and the Brits now have 7/7. What this means, I do not know.

http://slate.com/id/2122935/

Link