New Journalism

I conceive my "book" once it is written in more the draft notes as piece of New Journalism adopting the style of a documentary novel.

I will hope to immerse my reference audience in the "excitement of the real" and the issues as they appear. At present only the political/analysis on the relevance of ethno-religious fundamentalism to the break-up of multi-national states in the modern era is developed properly.

My "book" would have to successively develop a personal narrative and have subtle descriptive detail that would bring my experience to life and explored motives and emotions from the immediately comprehensible. My accounts would compliment the works of others that witnessed the same events. Then a military historian could use us as source material to write an account of the internationals which lacked our personal agendas.

History is not however a news item or myth that is represnted metonymitically.

My personal work was designed to challenge the stereotypical image of the mercenary "Ronin" to appeal to the "knight errant" in all soldiers; the mythical, atavistic, archetypal poet-warrior-priest of cultural memory. And to explore the meaning such a figure has to contemporary ethnic conflict. But I will pursue these aims through a conventional autobiographical narrative within the confines of the genre.

Hopefully the political analysis will put our experience in context of the wider social and cultural movements that form the anti-globalisation "blowback" and the absolute moral relativism of post-modernity.