Good-Bye to All That : An Autobiography

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Summary: Masterful and Ironic Caricatures of Human Folly
Review: "Good-Bye to All That" is one of the most imminently readable autobiographies I have yet come across. Generally, I do not particularly care for the autobiographical genre of writing, nor, based on my public school and university history textbooks, would I have professed much interest in history. Graves' book, however, changes "all that." Two aspects of the book have endeared it to me:

First, Graves' writing style is replete with droll, dry wit. His use of irony to paint word pictures in his readers' minds is masterful. His use of language is inspiring to every occasional writer who longs for such skill. His ability to see through the façades of academic reputation in both public school and university, of nationalistic patriotism, of formally organized religion, and of military tradition overcomes popular perception to show the ignorant, delusional, self-serving nature of such things. Never are his unveilings heavy-handed, though. On the contrary, Graves depicts events and presents examples in descriptions that he refers to as "caricatures," but it would be a dull reader indeed who fails to perceive the ironies implicit in these entertaining recitations.

Second, Graves' autobiography is revealing of many historical topics that escape adequate coverage in most textbooks. The reader comes away with a much improved understanding of early 20th century British society, education, and culture. Because most of the book deals with Graves' experiences in the trench warfare of World War I, the reader comes to visualize the barbarity and insanity of war more acutely than he may have hitherto done. Then there are tidbits that generally escape the formal history textbooks altogether-the antipathy between British troops and French citizenry that led some Britons to the conclusion that their country had aligned itself with the wrong side in the war; the imprisonment of British residents of German ancestry resulting from war paranoia (foreshadowing America's treatment of its citizens of Japanese ancestry during the next world war); British soldiers' opinion of American "support" as American artillery shells showed themselves frequently to be duds or, worse, to fall short and explode in the British trenches rather than the German. Graves presents us history as he saw it first hand, and we are spell bound by his power as a storyteller.

The book also has, from my perspective, two significant weaknesses. First, my command of American English did not always stand me in good stead when confronted by some words and phrases of peculiarly colloquial British usage. This edition of the book does include a short "Glossary for non-British readers," but it needs to be about twice as long for some of us. The second weakness, more of a disappointment, really, is that the narrative stops when Graves is only thirty-three. Even though Graves later appended a brief epilogue, the reader wishes that he had continued his story for many more years, for we come to feel a friendship for this man and are enjoying sitting at his knee, listening to him recount his insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking observations on life-and we do not want the story to end.

"Good-Bye to All That" is well worth the reading to any number of people-aspiring writers (note Graves' style), lovers of poetry (understand the life behind the poetry), and students of history (learn from it or repeat it eternally). In fact, I cannot conceive of any literate person who would not find Graves' autobiographical tale both enjoyable and instructive.

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Summary: Graves in retrospect......
Review:

This is Robert Graves' tell all autobiography, or at least the "revised second edition" which doesn't quite tell all. At the time of writing Graves was only 33 yet already had about 30 publications to his name, mostly poetry collections & essays. He had rubbed shoulders with such writers as Edward Marsh, Robert Frost, Siegfried Sasson, T.E. Lawrence, Ezra Pound & Edith Sitwell. Graves had served as a Royal Welsh Fusiler for almost the entire duration of WW1 & been severely wounded, even pronounced dead, before being demobilized. After the war Graves went on to receive his B Litt. degree from Oxford & eventually found a position as the Professor of English Literature at the Royal Egyptian University in Cairo. All this & numerous other stories, events & anecdote are given here in full detail.

Goodbye To All That is most famous for it's graphic & realistic depiction of life in the trenches of WW1. Graves goes into all the details of his military experience. We aren't spared a single battle or a single death. He captures the horror & awe of the war with a roughness that made the book one of the most popular written accounts of WW1. We are presented with scenes of atrocities, suicides, murders & heroic rescues one after another until we can almost feel the emotional change that Graves himself felt as he went from innocent schoolboy to professional soldier. The physical & emotional damage caused by this change are themes that Graves would return to again & again for the remainder of his life.

Oddly enough the man who is most famous as a romantic poet talks very little of his poetry in his autobiography. Despite having several volumes of poetry published by this time, Graves turns away from this & spends more time dealing with the war & problems both on the front & at home in England. Poetry, romance & even love seemed to play a very little part in Graves' life during these years. He mentions his 1st wife Nancy only near the end of the book & offers us only a one dimensional image of her as the devout feminist whom he loved but whom he probably shouldn't have married. Laura Riding doesn't appear in the book at all despite the fact that Graves had known her for 3 years by the time he wrote Goodbye. Other writers or poets who do turn up tend to be there only fleetingly to provide a particular anecdote or to justify Graves' opinion of them. Graves seldom goes into any great depth about their works or their personalities.

Overall, Goodbye To All That is a odd book that sits on the fence between a typical war book & a biography of a literary man. It can't be placed neatly into either category & this is what makes it such interesting reading for the fans of either type. Graves stands out as one of the few literary men who could display his intelligence & education even while dishing out the most brutal scenes of warfare.

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Summary: systemic change
Review: An extremely well written book. Superior writing and a remarkable perspective.

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Summary: Is Oxford what it used to be?
Review: Even though parts of the book read like therapy-writing, this is the only account of Graves by himself, and as such it should be highly valued. Enter Britain at the beginning of the century: Public Schools, Oxford and -preeminent in the narrative- World War I at the french front. Graves was courageous, shell-shocked and always artistic. Back at Oxford as a neurasthenic veteran he still had enough brains left to entertain T.E. Lawrence. I admire Graves deeply and I regret he decided not to continue his autobiography past his time as a Professor of Literature at the University of Cairo. Those interested in his years in Majorca could follow Graves to Deja with the biography written by his friend Seymour-Smith.

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Summary: the great classic memoire of the great-war age
Review: For years friends told me to read this book, and it was only when I was on a WWI binge that I finally opened it. It is a candid and charming autobio that evokes the entire era of the loss of innocence of a European generation. Graves makes it come alive so vividly that the reader cannot resist his point of view, as the best novels do. Highest recommendation.

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Summary: Essential WWI reading
Review: Good-bye to All That is a funny, moving, and often infuriating piece of work. If you're reading this to get a clear sense of an officer's experience on the front during the First World War, then you're missing the point. By using farce, rumors, anecdotes, and all kinds of "documents" like newspaper articles, inventories, even soldier's songs, Graves evokes the confusion and the absurdity of twentieth century warfare. There is no clarity here, and the distinctions which usually help us to understand events, such as good v. evil, heroism v. cowardice, enemy v. foe, are conspicuously absent. Again and again, Graves compels the reader to make his own judgements about the narrative.

At the time that Good-bye to All That was published, Graves's fellow writer-combatants, Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon, were so annoyed by the book that they annotated an advance copy, "correcting" the errors and inaccuracies which they found in Graves's accounts of battle. But I think they were missing the point. Graves is less concerned with recording the facts of the war than in evoking the state of mind which both produced the war and was produced by the war. For this reason, Good-bye to All That serves as an important document of the war experience-- and it's also compulsively readable. Highly recommended.

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Summary: Perhaps still the premiere war memoir in English
Review: GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT is about considerably more than just Graves's experiences in the trenches in WW I, but it is that section of the book that makes this memoir stand apart from most others. That, and the exceptional honesty of the book, which manages to be tell-all without being gossipy. There is also a sense of renunciation; instead of nostalgic longing to recover the past as one find in other memoirs, Graves is anxious to put the past aside for good, to have done with it entirely.

The best parts of the book are those dealing with his dreadful time in school, he time serving in the war, and his various friendships. Some of those friendships sneak up on you. He writes at length of a literature professor at school named George Mallory who profoundly molded his reading and literary sensibilities. He writes for page after page about "George," but it isn't until he begin a chapter with the words, "George Mallory did something better than lend me books: he too me climbing on Snowdon in the school vacation." It wasn't until that moment that I realized that George Mallory the literature instructor was THAT George Mallory, the famous mountain climber who attempted Everest (and perhaps conquered it) "because it is there." George becomes one of Graves's greatest friends, and even serves as best man in his wedding. The other friendship I found fascinating, perhaps because the man himself remains one of the most mystifying characters of the 20th century, was T. E. Lawrence. As Lawrence removed himself from the public eye more and more in the 1920s and 1930s, being in 1920 perhaps one of the most famous individuals in the British Empire, he changed personas from Lawrence of Arabia to Private Shaw, reenlisting in the Army as an auto mechanic. Graves remained a good friend of his throughout the entire period, and wrote one of the first serious biographies of Lawrence. I enjoyed one passage where he is in Lawrence's quarters at (I think) Cambridge, eyeing the manuscript of Lawrence's own war memoirs, what would eventually become THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM (Graves would be one of a select few to receive a copy of the first privately printed edition, which remains one of the great published books of the 20th century, with expensively reproduced drawings and illustrations--subsequent editions remove most of the illustrations).

But the heart of the book is the account of his experiences at the front. Although this war produced a disproportionate amount of great literature, I personally believe that the two greatest literary monuments to the Great War (unless one also includes Lawrence's THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM) are Graves's memoir and the poetry of Wilfrid Owen. The sections of the book dealing with the war seem to alternate between the startling everyday to the nightmarish. In many sections the mood seems to be straight out of Dante's PURGATORIO, at the worst his INFERNO. But throughout, the story is carried forward by Graves's relentlessly honest pen. Although Graves's wrote an absolutely stunning number of books, in particular the two Claudius novels, this fine volume just might be his greatest work.

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Summary: More "All That" than "Goodbye"
Review: Graves describes in vivid detail his WWI experiences in the trenches, and an equally compelling value of the book is the picture it paints of British society before the war, and Graves' youth spent in great expectation. Not only does Graves bid goodbye to his own age of innocence, through this autobiography he bids goodbye to an age that is changed forever by the first world war. This book is a must read for students of the 20th century.

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Summary: Only readable primary WWI era book I've read
Review: Graves gives us a very readable view of

English life before, during and after WWI. He is witty and understated, but doesn't pull punches either.

I'd recommend this book highly to anyone interested in WWI, literary types of the early part of the century, English history, biographies or just looking for a good read.

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Summary: Riveting good read, with minor caveats.
Review: Graves has written the archetypical memoir of the First World War. Students of the genre will recognize all the familiar elements of a recollection of the era (present in other places, such as Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday): reminiscences of bittersweet childhood, graphic and extensive accounts of the horrors of war, dawning realization of war's futility, gradual social separation from peers, and finally postwar rejection of societal norms. It's formulaic, but it has two virtues to recommend it -- first, it was among the first of its kind, so you can't accuse Graves of unoriginality; and second, it's gripping and well-written, ranking, in my opinion, with his fine prose in I, Claudius.

Good-Bye to All That is ostensibly a comprehensive autobiography, but of course the meat of the text lies in the war, which takes up a good two-thirds of the book. Thematically, this is the good stuff; the remainder is vaguely disturbing, especially in the postwar era, when Graves abandons religion, embraces socialism, loses his wife, and eventually sails into exile. He ends up with the same sort of inchoate nihilism that was so fashionable at the time, and it's irritating to encounter the logical processes that led to this behavior ("I saw Christians/capitalists/the King endorsing the war, and the war was awful, so I will therefore reject Christianity/capitalism/the King"). It may seem exciting and bold to the new reader, but once you've imbibed enough early Hemingway, Dos Passos, Sassoon, et al., the basic infantile nature of the reaction becomes clear.

Still, we shouldn't be too hard on Graves, or this book. A spell in the trenches was probably enough to make a man disavow his own mother, albeit not necessarily write a popular book about it. Good-Bye to All That is an engaging piece of our late cultural canon, and it deserves to be read as such.