Fire

by Sebastian Junger

Release Date: 24 September, 2002

Edition: Paperback

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Review of Sebastian Junger's Fire

Sebastian Junger's fascination with dangerous lines of work and "people confronting situations that could easily destroy them" (Fire, xvii) brought him wide fame and notoriety with the story of the Gloucester swordfishing boat, the Andrea Gail, in magazine articles and then The Perfect Storm, his bestselling first book. However, his desire to find people in these situations (and, in a sense, an attempt to describe his own reasons for being in those situations) is the underlying theme of his new book, a collection of excellent magazine articles and other short works called Fire.

Coincidentally so is the name of the first piece, an essay about forest firefighting in general and the efforts at the Flicker Creek fire, one of many non-descript fires Mr. Junger covered, in 1992. It's a particularly good piece about the hazards of fighting forest fires, the techniques and terminology used, some history, and most of all the various groups of people that do the actual fighting. One of Mr. Junger's first articles (though there is no credit as to where it was published, if anywhere), "Fire" serves as a nice introduction, thematically and stylistically, for the rest of the book.

Another article deals with the fire at Storm King Mountain, which killed twelve firefighters in 1994 and is very similarly themed. Following that is the bulk of the book, a series of articles concerning war and conflict in all its misery; Mr. Junger covers the Kashmir, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Cyprus, and finally, in two very telling pieces, Afghanistan (before and after September 11, 2001). Interspersed are two articles, one dealing with one of the last Caribbean whale hunters (which doesn't sound particularly dangerous these days but remember the story of the ramming and destruction of the whaleship Essex and the novel it inspired, Moby Dick) and John Colter, an early 19th century fur trapper/frontiersmen and the quest for, lacking a better term, adventure.

Mr. Junger engages the reader in an easy yet realistic prose that is absorbable and mesmerizing at the same time. Occasionally, given similar subject matter (the two articles on forest firefighters and Afghanistan, for instance) he unintentionally repeats himself, which can be annoying, but cannot be helped.

However, each of the articles tell their own unique, wrapped story that leaves the reader wanting to more, wanting to know what happened after the writing stopped. Some, like "Escape from Kashmir" end in a lucky escape attempt and mystery, while others, like "The Terror of Sierra Leone" and "Dispatches from a Dead War," end in everlasting misery of unending conflict and hatred.

In the end, Mr. Junger's search for dangerous situations and occupations puts him in the very same situations, acting for the most part as a war correspondent and writer. Sometimes it just makes one wish they'd never encountered it, such as Mr. Junger's vivid description of coming under a Taliban artillery bombardment on an Afghani hilltop: "There was nothing exciting about it, nothing even abstractly interesting. It was purely, exclusively bad." (Fire, 207)

Yet Mr. Junger returned; in late 2001 he followed the fighters of the Northern Alliance as they attacked and swept through the Taliban, into Kabul. Why? Mr. Junger never says, though the excuse that it was a job was probably valid. However, it could be that he probably would not want to be anywhere else - and that, beyond any other motive, is really the sole truth behind the men and women of Fire.

Hairy-Chested Machismo

The "Perfect Storm" was such a powerful, compelling read that Sebastian Junger's fans are probably a little disappointed with his next effort, "Fire" a compilation of previously published essays written throughout the nineties. But that disappointment aside, there are some real gems here. Junger puts himself in harm 's way to tell a good story. Whether joining a fire fighting crew in the Rockies, being dropped in Kosovo's Valley of Death, dodging drug-crazed and armed teenagers in Sierra Leone, or interviewing a rebel leader in pre-September 11 Afghanistan, Junger searches out the off-beat, but important story. And yet my favorite of the essays is the quietest: an examination of how the Greeks and Turks in divided Cyprus have, unwittingly and unwillingly, reached a sort of peace that may last. For all his chest-thumping, Junger is a thoughtful and talented writer. Though I, too, await a hoped-for longer treatment of some theme or event, these essays are a very satisfying interlude.