Officers and Gentlemen (Complete and Unaridged)

Rating:
Summary: Vastly over-rated
Review: I am a huge Evelyn Waugh fan--A Handful of Dust, Put Out More Flags, and Brideshead Revisited are among my favorite novels of all time. But this book just doesn't work. It seems a mishmash of different parts and seems haphazardly, even lazily written. Waugh seems to get bored of his protagonist Guy Crouchbook toward the end and dumps him to follow other characters, characters recently introduced to us and who we don't particularly care about. Although the Crete scenes are nicely done, we just want to get them over with. This book isn't half as good as the first part of the trilogy and, I hate to say it, if it wasn't Waugh it would almost certainly not be in print today.

Rating:
Summary: Slow Start but Impressive Finish
Review: I just finished "Officer and Gentlemen" after having read "Men at Arms" last year. I must admit that I began asking myself what the point of the story was through the first two thirds of the book. Waugh has an enjoyable style of writing that has carried me through others of his books. I remember thinking what a wonderful book "Brideshead Revisited" was after I finished it. However, to this day I'm not sure why the author wrote it. Evelyn Waugh has a reputation as a humorist but that, for me, is misleading. I can see his satire and spoofing of the upper class and there is much of that in "Officers and Gentlemen". However, Waugh is no Mark Twain. My favorite book by Waugh is "A Handful of Dust" which touched me very deeply. Reading that this, too, is a work of humor (as well as tragedy) confuses me.

"Officers and Gentlemen", as I mentioned, starts out slowly but reaches a point of real insight when the men of Hookforce enter the reality of war. The theater of war is Crete and the personalized images of war were, for me, the real value of the book. I realized that the first two thirds was to acquaint us with the different characters so we were better able to see the effects that war had on them. Along the way we do get a lot of "humorous" satire on the military and its bureacracy. One scene has the main Character, Guy, contemplating all that he has witnessed and experienced. His deep thoughts end when called for cocktails.

This is the sixth book by Evelyn Waugh that I have read. I'll read more because he writes well. I mentioned that ther are times that I wondered what his point was in writing a particular book. However, there are also times, such as I experienced in "Officers and Gentlemen" where I am very glad that I read the book.

Rating:
Summary: War And The Solitary Man
Review: The period of time between the fall of France and the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union justifiably has been called Britain's finest hour, when the island nation stood alone against Hitler and the Axis powers. Trust Evelyn Waugh to write a novel about this effort that manages to find more to mock and be acerbic about than to be proud of. Amazingly, as fiction "Officers And Gentlemen" not only works but shines, and is a gripping account of how one fellow's war may or may not jibe with the larger political effort around him.

In the previous volume of Evelyn Waugh's "Sword of Honour" trilogy, "Men At Arms," we met the pallid Guy Crouchback, heir to an Anglo-Catholic aristocratic line of no special importance, struggling to find some personal meaning in the great conflagration that was World War II. 'Men At Arms' is a mostly funny read, a comedy of errors and barracks farce, with some dramatic detours that accumulate in frequency and gravity by story's end.

"Officers And Gentlemen" has a starker break point between the humor and the drama, which occurs after Guy and his unit is sent to Crete to cover the British retreat there. The Crete section of this story is harrowing, affecting reading; a collection of isolated moments that never quite gel because they are not supposed to. Waugh based this on his own similar experience doing very much the same thing in that battle, and throws up a dozen or so vignettes that only barely pierce through the fog of war: Radios thrown over the side of a ship; a soldier disguising himself as an officer so he can flee the front easier, a commander too tired to give orders to his newly-arrived reinforcements, a vigil beside a dead soldier lying nameless in a desolate village.

Virtually every soldier Guy meets is lacking in some way, particularly a by-the-book brigade major named Hound and a dashing but callow sort named Claire who are among his closest companions. While Stukas dive and rain havoc on the shattered troops, Guy tries to figure out what he's supposed to be doing in this awful place. When he finally gets his orders, they are to do the unimaginable: Surrender.

Before Crete, "Officers And Gentlemen" is a fairly funny read, not in a laugh-out-loud way so much as invigorating. The opening part features the aerial Battle of Britain, sacred stuff in the history of the conflict, but leavened here by the fact it is being observed by two tipsy officers inside a private club who watch nearby buildings burn and try to agree on which painter the resulting effect is most reminiscent of: "Not Martin. The skyline is too low. The scale is less than Babylonian."

Then it's off to the Inner Hebrides, and the mythical island of Mugg, with its rocky outcroppings, its castle "indestructible and uninhabitable by anyone but a Scottish laird," and a troop of Commandos slowly going to seed. Guy struggles to prove himself worthy of this crew, even as he begins to wonder about their merit.

War is human tragedy, and Waugh never loses sight of that or allows the reader to. Even light moments are interrupted by grim tidings, like the fate of a minor character aboard a ship of Italian internees sailing to Canada (based on a true incident). At the same time, Waugh doesn't wallow in sorrow or bathos. Even his toughest sections in Crete are unsentimentally and plainly presented. He doesn't expect our tears, or want them. He just wants to involve us in his personal take on mankind's greatest challenge of the 20th century, a take all the more valuable because it's not at all what you might expect from World War II storytelling. The ending of the story, for example, when Britain no longer finds itself alone after Hitler attacks the Soviet Union, would be a cause for celebration in any other book, but for Guy (and Waugh) it is something else to mourn. His nation's cause is besmirched by the fact it has taken on an ally every bit as diabolically totalitarian as the enemy.

Such things make the novel tougher for others to take, but to me it points up the singularity and uniqueness of Waugh's vision, which make all his writing, but particularly great works like this one, worth reading.

As with the other volumes in 'Sword of Honour,' ('Men At Arms' before and 'Unconditional Surrender' after), readers wanting insight and context are well off visiting David Cliffe's handy notes at http://www.abbotshill.freeserve.co.uk/home2.htm.

Rating:
Summary: Vastly over-rated
Review: This book continues the 'Sword of Honor" trilogy begun with Men at Arms. Halberdier Guy Crouchback returns from Africa chastened, but still anxious to serve his country in its time of need. Dismissed from his regiment due to his complicity in the death of his friend Apthorpe, Guy is now assigned to a Commando unit. As part of a patchwork group called Hookforce, X Commando reaches the island of Crete just in time to cover the retreat and embarkation of the regular Allied forces, and are left with orders to surrender to the enemy after the other groups have left.

Once again, Waugh points his dry English wit at the freshly-commissioned British officers of WWII to amusing effect, while still making serious points about the readiness of British forces and the military suitability of Britain's gentry. For example, one running gag is an officer frantically rushing to headquarters only to find that the commander doesn't know what to do with him. The comedic high point is when Trimmer (a former hairdresser) is sent on a largely pointless mission by officers who are desperate to score a success - any success - in order to improve public perceptions of their unit. Operation Popgun goes awry when the sub gets lost and accidentally stumbles into enemy territory, and when a sergeant, acting without orders, blows up a supply train, a clever reporter manages to describe the mission as a dramatic success, rather than the comedy of errors that it actually was.

More serious are the concluding sections that describe various characters' arduous withdrawal from Crete. While there may be some black humor in these scenes, they seem to played more for dramatic effect, to show how men react to such harrowing situations. Although Major Hound, Guy, and Ivor Claire each make different choices, one can scarcely say that one was really better than the other.

Readers who enjoyed Men at Arms will find this volume rather darker, with less emphasis on hijinks and more on military action. Men at Arms really should be read first, however, because this volume assumes a certain familiarity with Crouchback's personality and military record, as well as some of the minor characters who are referred to frequently. If you read Men at Arms but didn't really care for it, be forewarned: this book isn't any funnier, but delves a little more deeply into the misery of war.

Rating:
Summary: More serious
Review: This book continues the 'Sword of Honor" trilogy begun with Men at Arms. Halberdier Guy Crouchback returns from Africa chastened, but still anxious to serve his country in its time of need. Dismissed from his regiment due to his complicity in the death of his friend Apthorpe, Guy is now assigned to a Commando unit. As part of a patchwork group called Hookforce, X Commando reaches the island of Crete just in time to cover the retreat and embarkation of the regular Allied forces, and are left with orders to surrender to the enemy after the other groups have left.

Once again, Waugh points his dry English wit at the freshly-commissioned British officers of WWII to amusing effect, while still making serious points about the readiness of British forces and the military suitability of Britain's gentry. For example, one running gag is an officer frantically rushing to headquarters only to find that the commander doesn't know what to do with him. The comedic high point is when Trimmer (a former hairdresser) is sent on a largely pointless mission by officers who are desperate to score a success - any success - in order to improve public perceptions of their unit. Operation Popgun goes awry when the sub gets lost and accidentally stumbles into enemy territory, and when a sergeant, acting without orders, blows up a supply train, a clever reporter manages to describe the mission as a dramatic success, rather than the comedy of errors that it actually was.

More serious are the concluding sections that describe various characters' arduous withdrawal from Crete. While there may be some black humor in these scenes, they seem to played more for dramatic effect, to show how men react to such harrowing situations. Although Major Hound, Guy, and Ivor Claire each make different choices, one can scarcely say that one was really better than the other.

Readers who enjoyed Men at Arms will find this volume rather darker, with less emphasis on hijinks and more on military action. Men at Arms really should be read first, however, because this volume assumes a certain familiarity with Crouchback's personality and military record, as well as some of the minor characters who are referred to frequently. If you read Men at Arms but didn't really care for it, be forewarned: this book isn't any funnier, but delves a little more deeply into the misery of war.