Glass (Pray the Electrons Back to Sand)

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Glass: Pray the Electrons Back to Sand is a war novel by James Chapman, published in 1994 by Fugue State Press.

The book deals with the Persian Gulf War, portraying it as a surreal exercise in alienating technology, and using an ex-alcoholic Marine as protagonist to depict the effects of high technology on the realities of warfare.

The concluding sections of the book are a panoramic montage of the war from dozens of points of view, from its soldiers, boosters, politicians, protestors, and its many victims.

One reviewer, in the Cambridge Book Review, referred to the book's fragmented style in these terms: "The style in which Chapman has chosen to write Glass is an acknowledgment that the Gulf War was unlike other wars in our history. Soldiers, civilians, protesters and politicians alike were mystified -- and still are today -- as to what in fact the fighting and killing were really about. Glass exposes a darkness within the American character that suggests we carry warfare within us at all times, ever ready to be encouraged and unleashed. Chapman is equally effective at showing us how the Gulf War was kept sanitized for us by an unknowingly complicit news media that were just as dazzled as the military by the new technologies that enhanced the efficiency of both the killing and the reporting. As one of VJ's Marine buddies remarks, 'We made our country so cool that we can even have a war be like a movie if we want.'"^[1]