DEAR MR. PRESIDENT

Eight debut stories and a novella about America’s relationship with conflict and violence in the context of the Gulf War.

If combat is changing, then so must war stories. The novella here, “Notes From a Bunker Along Highway 8,” is a rambling account of a soldier stationed along the Euphrates River contending with the chimpanzees in his care; with a one-armed buddy to whom he is teaching yoga; and with letters from his angry Green-Beret-hero-just-come-out-of-the-closet father. In the letters the soldier is told, “I can’t wait to see the great stories your generation write about their war. Oh, boy. That’s going to be fascinating. What do you know of honor, of sacrifice, of death anyway?” A good deal, it turns out, though expect it in the form of wacky. In “The Cure as I Have Found It,” the bloodthirsty origins of war can’t be escaped even by a vet: his life and trauma are retold in the tone of impassioned hypercombat. “Cross Dresser” is a Stealth pilot ex-POW’s melancholy and metaphysical explanation of why, now, his wife has films of him in girls’ dresses. The title story is a letter to Bush from a loyal young corporal who comes home from the war with an extra ear, which causes his wife to grow an extra tooth, both suggesting the effect of war on family. “The American Green Machine” is a satire of a futuristic recruitment scheme that brainwashes jarheads. Hudson’s tales deliver their sad humanity in the mode of absurdity, and deep beneath the wordplay and high-jinks are plenty of smart satire and not a few tears. At times, the imagery can seem adolescent, but even this rings true for a nation that is itself, Hudson tells us, adolescent. Still, one wishes for fewer easy jokes and more lines like “Dead sheep littered the landscape like fallen clouds.”

An important contribution to war literature, and certainly a talent to watch. Along with Jonathan Safran Foer and others, Hudson was featured in the New Yorker’s Debut Writers of 2001 issue.