Last One In (P.S.) - Softcover

Kulish, Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061189391 ISBN 13: 9780061189395

Publisher: Ecco, 2007

Synopsis

Jimmy Stephens makes the worst mistake of his career as a gossip columnist when he wrongly accuses a big star of cheating on his wife. With lawsuits pending, Jimmy's imperious new editor blackmails him into taking the place of the paper's injured front-line war correspondent. Shipped off to the desert and embedded with a group of foulmouthed but fraternal Marines, Jimmy provides a bewildered but unfiltered view of the invasion of Iraq that is alternately hair-raising, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

About this title

About the Author

In 2003, Nicholas Kulish was embedded with a Marine attack-helicopter squadron for the Wall Street Journal. He is an editorial writer at the New York Times and has also written for the Washington Post, Washington Monthly, and ESPN magazine. He lives in New York City.

From the Back Cover

Jimmy Stephens makes the worst mistake of his career as a gossip columnist when he wrongly accuses a big star of cheating on his wife. With lawsuits pending, Jimmy's imperious new editor blackmails him into taking the place of the paper's injured front-line war correspondent. Shipped off to the desert and embedded with a group of foulmouthed but fraternal Marines, Jimmy provides a bewildered but unfiltered view of the invasion of Iraq that is alternately hair-raising, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

Reviews

Kulish, a journalist who was embedded with a Marine attack-helicopter unit for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, draws on that experience for this satirical debut novel. Facing dismissal over an erroneous story of celebrity infidelity, New York Daily Herald gossip reporter Jimmy Stephens is given a second chance. The country is about to go to war in Iraq, and the paper's veteran war correspondent is laid up after being hit by a delivery truck. To save his job, a reluctant and clueless Jimmy assumes the position. In Kuwait, Stephens joins a Marine infantry company and hitches a ride in a Humvee with four typical Marines: profane and irreverent, but thoroughly professional when necessary. The tough Marines, of course, tease the "sissy-ass civilian reporter," but sharing privation and sporadic combat affect Stephens and his Marine companions in unexpected ways. Though the war has changed dramatically since the initial invasion—lending a strangely dated feeling to the narrative—a steady flow of Yossarian-flavored absurdity ("We're the pro-Iraqi forces, and the anti-Iraqi forces are the Iraqis") smoothes out the bumps in Stephens's odyssey. (July)
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Kulish launches his clever, affecting novel as a fish-out-of-water narrative: a New York gossip columnist is sent to cover the Iraq war (that, or get fired for a libellous mistake) and is embedded with the Marines. Jimmy Stephens, the reporter, is portrayed as something of a naïf; trying on his protective clothing, he "didn’t entirely understand why people on both sides were about to die." There is comedy (a dimwitted network correspondent provides some of it), and Kulish’s affection for the Marines is palpable. There is considerably less laughter, though, when the invasion begins and Kulish (who was himself embedded with a Marine attack-helicopter unit) describes the sights and emotions of warfare. Through Jimmy’s increasingly fearful and perceptive eyes, the conflict is a cruel, mismanaged catastrophe from the very first shot.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061189391
• ISBN 13: 9780061189395
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261