Doing Battle : The Making of a Skeptic

Rating:
Summary: A biography, not just about WWII
Review: Based on the title, I expected this book to be completely about Fussell's WWII experiences. In fact, it's a biography. I expected to read about all sorts of horrible things, including U.S. atrocities, as a counter-point to the victory culture propaganda that I was deluged with, and believed in, as a child. That book has some of that. But Fussell is a curious fellow. He's very selective in his outrage about this and a lot more. He basically doesn't want to look at the whole picture. I think he knows he'd become a misanthrope if he did.

The book has a large section on life in Pasadena, CA, in the 20's and 30's. One can tell that the cultural rot had set in well before the Baby-Boom generation came a long. We're always led to believe that the Boomers are scum and all that came before were saints. I never quite believed that, and Fussell helps here. After all, who raised the Boomers ?

Fussell has peppered the book with small sexual references. The Boomers also believe they invented sex. It's clear they didn't.

The net result of the book is that Fussell comes across as a complex fellow, who enjoys his dark brooding hatreds, but enjoys life as well. He seems an establishment liberal when he needs to be, but harbors substantial doubts. I don't dislike him, and I don't like him. In the end, he just seems human. That's enough.

Rating:
Summary: I wish we were neighbors
Review: Doing Battle is an excellent book for these troubling times. Though obviously a prickly sort, Fussell his kept his critical faculties intact and properly skewers ineptitude, careerists, rationalizers, martinets, and soft-headedness. The center-piece of this autobiography is Fussell's experience as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in France and Germany in WWII. Fussell takes aim at the military - recounting the caprices and cruel arbitrariness of his own service with a scalpel-like pen.

Fussell also has little use for the beer-fueled sports culture that now dominates the American cultural landscape. He is first and foremost a defender of elitism - not an elitism based on social or economic class, but based on what and how one thinks and comports oneself in doing the tasks of daily life. Doing Battle is about honor and integrity, with Fussell having been lucky enough, or bright enough, to have had a series of teaching jobs that allowed his convictions and sense of honor and self to survive largely intact.

Fussell writes beautifully and movingly. He also lays himself bare in Doing Battle. It is a rare book in that it is scholarly as well as a good, quick read. The influence of Mencken is clearly felt. You put the book down at the end regretfully. You then begin the processs of recommending it to your special friends - the ones that you think will "understand."

I recommend the book highly.

Rating:
Summary: TO BE READ IN ONE SITTING
Review: Fussell's hatred of war and the United States Army makes him state falsehoods about the Army and the men who served in the infantry. He quotes British Field Marshal Alexander on the poor quality of American infantry. Surely he knows that Allenbrooke, Montgomery and Alexander all were extremely predjudiced against their American allies. He states that the 28th Infantry Division was so poor that the Germans specifically chose to attack it in the Battle of the Bulge. Sort of true, but that area was being used to rest battle weary divisions and "blood" inexperienced. The 28th was one of the former. He states that all of his training was useless, including rifle marksmanship. It is true that area fire was more common, but many men owed their life (Including him! He once encountered three Germans and won the shootout.) to being able to shoot straight and true. There is no doubt that he (more justly) would have been equally critical of an Army that did not train infantry to shoot straight. He states that the Germans were better infantry, which is largely correct, although our best units were at least as good. Most historians agree that in the Battle of the Bulge, our infantry fought very well, slowing the Germans if they could not stop them. If they were as bad as Fussell makes out, we never would have gotten off the Normandy beaches. Incidentally, he states his own men were to lazy to dig foxholes. I doubt this--since the Civil War infantry has known the value of being underground. But if true, it is a terrible inditement of him as a commander who did not care about the lives of the men committed to his care. (I can provide cites for my positive assertions, if anyone is interested.)

Since writing this review I have come acros two books, Closing with the Enemy by Michael D. Doubler, and The GI offensive in Europe by Peter R. Mansoor. These books discribe the training of infantry, the tactical lessons learned in battle, particularly the early fighting in North Africa and Italy, and how US infantry improved quickly. I no longer think I was right to concede as I did that German troops were usually better. By the end of North Africa, US troops were just as good and much better than the British. (They never did figure out that armored divisions needed organic infantry, for example--something American and German armies calculated before they even started fighting.) If you have a real interest in the history of W.W. II, these are important books. I am not aware of similar coverage of tactics in any of the standard histories.

Rating:
Summary: Thank you Paul
Review: His name must rhyme with tussle else the students he had at Connecticut College were not very good at poetry.
Very important point: his own description of his book "Class" (see especially p. 280 in "Doing Battle") describes it as straight irony. "Except for a page or two the book is unrelentingly facetious, packed with exaggerations and palpably irresponsible assertions, and I was astonished to find how many readers took it seriously." Beware of taking "Class" seriously!
I have to thank Paul for a very interesting autobiography. It continues to amaze me that biography makes so much clearer than does an author's straight forward critical work. You certainly need both. But a sense of the person who writes makes what they write so much more sensible. This book is more enjoyable than some other autobiographies. Still, it leaves me in a quandary. Much that PF says strikes home but there is always a sense that PF lives within a particular narrative (by the way, he critiques those that talk in terms of narratology on pp. 212-213 "The all-but-universal worship of science, social science, and analytic philosophy would soon encourage the half-educated to pepper their discourse with terms like narratology, disciplinarity, engendering, and interface." "Half-educated"? I have a t-shirt that says, "The truly educated never graduate." (Of course this places me in a class.) Today there are books with titles like these and I would hardly refer to the authors as half-educated. It feels almost like C.S. Lewis in "Words" critiquing their misuse. But new words are invented all the time and come to mean things by their use. I wonder if someplace PF critiques the concept of "meme". Clearly, PF's classical education is way superior to mine. He would certainly join the defense in the war against grammar. I have a programmable thermostat that I can't figure out how to work.
But I am partial myself to the narrative I suspect he follows. I was never in battle though I am retired Army. Should I try a book called "Doing Peace"? Imagine having a full career in the military without ever being in battle? Assuming I could talk about the experience would annoy PF far worse than Glenn Gray. At least Gray was within miles of such action.

Rating:
Summary: Not fun, but profoundly moving
Review: I'm not a literary person, I can't spell well, and I am not an infantryman. I was in the Army during the Viet Nam war, and I have a broad range on interests. I didn't choose this book, it was a gift. But it is one of the most moving books I have ever read.

Fussell is a critic, and he indirectly claims that his experiences in WWII were "the making of a skeptic" - and maybe it was. It is fantastic to see him skewer all forms of phoneyness and cover-up - including his own. You also get the impression that he is an uncompromising and very interesting character - but not fun or easy to get along with.

A real career combat infantryman I know had glanced at the book and claimed that Fussell just didn't understand Sherman's quote, "War is hell" and whined too much. I agreed that there was some truth to the criticism, but I got him to read the whole thing. His opinion changed dramatically for the better.

O.K., it is pretty much negative, but you can see underneath all that, he loves life, infantrymen, and people who try their very best and have honor. One of the few heros in the book is Gen. Eisenhower - but he is critical of President Eisenhower. It's a complex book, and he's a complex man. Get a glimpse inside him by reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Heartfelt Memoir
Review: Paul Fussell is one of the more ascerbic commentators on American life today. Nowhere is he more heartfelt than in Doing Battle, his own personal memoir. Fussell concentrates on his World War II experiences, when he was wounded both physically and emotionally. The story of his journey from a rather pampered Southern California youth to a war veteran recuperating in a field hospital is a contrarian view of the experiences of at least one member of "The Greatest Generation" His life afterwards, when he served on the faculties of a number of universities and made a name for himself as a scholar and social commentator, also makes for enjoyable reading. Witty, urbane, and honest, Doing Battle is one of the great autobiographies

Rating:
Summary: TO BE READ IN ONE SITTING
Review: Since "Class" and "The Dumbing of America" are the only two of Fussell's books I've ever read, I was expecting more cranky musings of the "Catch-22" variety. This book both delighted and surprised me. It takes to task the revisionist history that American soldiers in WWII were intrinsically noble and motivated only by ideals. While this is a comforting notion, it is also an unlikely one. It may cause discomfort that Fussell refuses to deify the American vet of the second world war, since the "goodness" of that conflict is an idea embraced by our culture. The fact that incompetence and cowardice were also part of the story may not be palatable, but I'm impressed by the author's honesty in presenting his own experience. To those who take exception to some of the "facts" in this book, it is important to point out that this is a memoir not a history. In whatever way the author chooses to remember "his" war is entirely legitimate.

My only objection to "Doing Battle" is that it seemed to be two books. I would have preferred that it end with his release from the army. While the last chapters were engaging, they were to me somewhat gratuitous. The author's adventures in academia could be a book in itself.

I read it in one sitting and was sad to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: Needs some ghosts and a couple of Prime Ministers
Review: Somewhat by chance, I read this book immediately after reading Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That" which I had read immediately after Samuel Hynes' "The Soldiers' Tale". I knew that Fussell would take inspiration from Graves but it wasn't until the end of this book that I discovered that he knows Samuel Hynes professionally.

Readers looking for a contrarian view of World War II should read Fussell's Wartime, one of my favorite books. This is more of a personal autobiography which I enjoyed for what it is. As it happens I enjoy reading about blood and guts but also about Poetics, so this is (also) my cup of tea. He doesn't really get in gear until he gets into the war. He could have added a lot more detail about growing up; he has a tendency to tell what his childhood was like rather than showing us, but the stuff about the poor training of the American infantry in World War II is really informative. I also find it interesting to read what it was like to get a PhD in English at Harvard after the War, and I wish he had actually gone into more detail about this, but that's just me.

I am a little surprised that he didn't add some ghost stories here and there and more references to famous people, like Prime Ministers and famous poets.

Rating:
Summary: Needs some ghosts and a couple of Prime Ministers
Review: Somewhat by chance, I read this book immediately after reading Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That" which I had read immediately after Samuel Hynes' "The Soldiers' Tale". I knew that Fussell would take inspiration from Graves but it wasn't until the end of this book that I discovered that he knows Samuel Hynes professionally.

Readers looking for a contrarian view of World War II should read Fussell's Wartime, one of my favorite books. This is more of a personal autobiography which I enjoyed for what it is. As it happens I enjoy reading about blood and guts but also about Poetics, so this is (also) my cup of tea. He doesn't really get in gear until he gets into the war. He could have added a lot more detail about growing up; he has a tendency to tell what his childhood was like rather than showing us, but the stuff about the poor training of the American infantry in World War II is really informative. I also find it interesting to read what it was like to get a PhD in English at Harvard after the War, and I wish he had actually gone into more detail about this, but that's just me.

I am a little surprised that he didn't add some ghost stories here and there and more references to famous people, like Prime Ministers and famous poets.