When Patrick Declerck finds out that he has to have massive brain surgery, he decides to go for sniper training in Arizona. The idea of doing the job right if the operation goes wrong is what triggers the strange journey. Granted, he hardly needs a sniper’s degree to put an end to it all, but Patrick Declerck comes from a family where guns have always been part of the landscape. And while he is aware of the danger they represent, he also knows their fatal attraction. Not having much else to do before his probably imminent death, he goes back to New York, his hometown, to pay tribute to the victims of 9/11, then hops on a plane to his paramilitary sniper training program in Arizona.

Sniper in Arizona is the tale of that training program in the middle of the desert, in 100° heat. The group – trainers and trainees alike -- is made up mostly of veterans: a collection of individuals who have had more than their share of hard knocks that Declerck observes with his anthropologist’s gaze. In the evening, after a day spent shooting, each of them returns to their own place. For Declerck, that means a typical local motel. As usual, in this new book, Declerck explores the outer limits of the absurdity of human existence in a world that it is perpetually torn between the void and collective imbecility.

All that’s left to help him survive is the music of words. And it’s up to that particular music (which changes key in each of his books) to bear the meaning and dark beauty of his journey.

Declerck, anthropologist, provides an astonishing account of firearms training in Arizona. Downtrodden people, dread of war, omnipresent violence… Evocation of a certain facet of America… and human beings’ enduring fascination with weapons and warfare.