The Great War and Modern Memory

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Summary: Worth the Read
Review: A book relevant to the current situation of the War on Terrorism.

Fussell's focus is the literary context of the British trench experience of WW1. Contending, as he well illustrates, that for the British WW1 was an extremely literary war. In the trenches young men were reading books, writing poetry, sending letters home, subscribing to magazines, and for those who were not slaughtered, beginning careers as writers... such as with Robert Graves.

Fussell starts out with Thomas Hardy and ends off with Thomas Pynchon, Norman Mailer, and even connects Alan Ginsberg's Howl to the Great War literary tradition. Along the way he explores a panoply of authors whereby the terribly horrid war was imagined within a context of the British literary tradition (Chaucer, Shakespeare, King Arthur etc.), and it becomes evident that the war may have been prolonged, and not sooner negotiated to a close, as a result of the elaboration of heroic story.

The summer of 1972 Fussell spent in the British War Museum in a secluded room going through boxes of troop correspondence. There is an interesting emphasis on the "language" of war, the words used to describe bodies blown about into indistinguishable lumps of flesh sort of thing.

War is not an imaginable event, and yet we as conscious humans need to give war a face that we can live with... and in some cases be willing to die for. I find the book relevent to now in respect of considering how the War on Terrorism is envisioned within the American literary tradition (Bush knows his Huck Finn). The metaphors, the words, the use of past examples to describe war derive from our literary and historical context.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the Read
Review: Another excellent book on the top 100 list. I think that I have figured out that some of the merit to a book being included on the list is whether it provides a portal to other literature worth reading. This book certainly does that and I now have several more books on my to-be-read list. As others have said, this book details the effect the infantry of the Great War had on our literature, world viewpoint, and psyche. The two criticisms I have are that he over-uses the label "irony" and his classification of "homoerotic". I have come to the conclusion that any contrast is 'ironic' to Fussel; thus, black would be ironic to white. I do not believe that is the case, or if it is, then 'irony' is so broad a category, it is has become meaningless and we should use more particular terms to communicate. Also, while I have no doubt that 'homoeroticism' and 'homosexuality' exist, Fussel quotes so many passages that merely show sentimentality of a man to another man that, I think it unfair to say it is 'homoerotic'. Certainly, men can be friends and have developed a depth of feeling for each other through a common traumatic experience that it does not need to be classified as 'homoerotic'. Or, if it does, like 'irony' the term has become so broad to emcompass such a large spectrum of emotions and feelings that it too has become meaningless.

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Summary: HOW THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BEGAN
Review: Centuries don't begin on time; the Twentieth didn't begin on January 1, 1900 (or 1901). Literary critic Paul Fussell located our century's birth in the appalling trenches of World War I in his insightful and thoroughly documented book, The Great War and Modern Memory.

It is hard to overpraise this book. I read the paperback in the late 1980s and reread it again last week. It is first and foremost a World War I British intellectual (literary) history but much, much more. Fussell is at home with the British literary heritage, which he shares with the poets and writers of the early 20th century. He covers in detail the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves (of I, Claudius fame) and the poetry of Wilfred Owen, along with many others.

We return to 1914, when there was no radio, no TV, no movies to speak of, and when the populace had implicit faith in their press, their King and "progress." The central irony of this book was that the population rushed to support the war in order to support these 19th century ideals, ideals which would be shattered in the war that gave birth to the twentieth century. Fussell documents how World War I gave us the standardized form, the wristwatch, daylight savings time, civilian censorship and bureaucratic euphemism--and for the first time, despair that technology was driving civilization into perpetual war.

So The Great War and Modern Memory is not just a literary anthology; it has elements of political and social history and even (in the chapter titled "Soldier Boys" and for lack of a better term) what would come to be called Gay Studies. It is no accident that Fussell was a soldier himself (in World War II) and his sympathies lie with the common "grunt"; he does not mince words.

This is a wonderful book and it's hard to come away without learning something. The book introduced me to writers I wasn't familiar with; it also broadened my knowledge of the Great War and fleshed out my rather la-di-da, "Upstairs Downstairs" view of Edwardian England. Most important, it got under my skin--I've thought about the book on and off for the past 14 years. Few books do that to me--I would rank this up there with Ann Douglas' The Feminization of American Culture as a milestone of intellectual history and, like her work, you don't have to accept the central thesis to have a great time reading it.

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Summary: The GW&MM has opened whole new worlds for me.
Review: Given that fifteen of the sixteen previous customer reviews have contained cogent and quite articulate praise for Professor Fussell's book, my praises may seem redundant. However, this is such a brilliant and important book that I am compelled to write about it.
I have been obsessed with The GW&MM since I first read it in 1978, so obsessed that I have read it many times. Each time I read it new ideas and new authors spring out of the text and send me to the library or bookstore. Fussell's prose is captivating, and his scholarship is breathtaking in both breadth and depth. My first reading of The GS&MM was in Belgium during a Sabbatical year in Brussels. Our son was writing a senior ISP on the effect of the German invasion on Belgium, and we went to Ypres as part of the research. We were both overwhelmed by the 105 Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries there, and reading The GW&MM during that period helped to put these beautiful and touching burial grounds into the context of the mud and stink that was the Salient during (and for several years after) 1914-1918.
Prof. Fussell introduced me to Graves (my favorite) and Sassoon and Blunden and David Jones and Wifred Owen and opened the door to these wonderful novelists and poets for a biochemist without much appreciation of British literature.
The GW&MM presents an amazing constellation of knowledge and understanding and compassion for the victims of WW I, and my recommendation of this masterpiece is totally enthusiastic and without reservation.

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Summary: Fascinating Analysis of the Works of Great War Soldiers
Review: I have had an interest in the First World War since I saw an 8 hour documentary on public television a few years ago. Trying to decide which book to purchase on the subject, this work caught my eye. A book on the way in which the Great War helped shape the modern world was just what I was looking for. Plus, it was written by Paul Fussell, who I recalled from the famous essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb." Fussell is one of the most respected historians with a reputation for telling it like it is. Well, this book was a little different than I thought it would be, but did not disappoint.

From this book, I've gained a better understanding about life in the trenches and the general backgrounds of the Great War soldiers (at least a better understanding than would be expected from a spoiled Gen. Xer who would never experience such a watershed event). Fussell explains the trench system and the daily routines very well by including many details a lot of books do not offer. I did not realize the close proximity between the trenches and the civilian populations or how speedy and efficient the mail service was at the front. He gives a nice overview of the time period (what was considered important, etc.) to help the reader understand what ideas shaped the lives of soldiers before the war and how their backgrounds helped them cope and make some sort of sense out of the wretched conditions they faced (i.e. a common interest in pastoral images). "Pilgrim's Progress," for example, was a novel most British soldiers read. In fact, language, in general, was one of the only forms of entertainment at the time, so most soldiers were connected by literature no matter their social class (hard to imagine these days). Fussell also gives a brief history of sky awareness to explain how life in the trenches caused many soldiers to view the wonders above them in a new light.

As a professor of English literature, it is understandable that Fussell concentrated on the works of English soldiers: Siegfried Sassoon, David Jones, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden, Robert Nichols to name a few (if a reader is interested in other combatants, they may wish to put off buying this book). Fussell is such an expert of this era (not only of literature) that he is able to warn the reader of fictional stories in the "memoirs" and the "autobiographies" he analyzes. Fussell regards Grave's "Goodbye To All That" as fiction (and Graves even admitted as much). Of course, not being historical fact does not diminish the importance of such works. Fussell examines poems and memoirs in a way that helps even readers like me (who have not read any of the works) to recognize the ways they shed light on the Great War. You do not need vast knowledge of the First World War to enjoy this book.

Fussell does touch on "modern memory" (at least from a 1970's perspective). WWII suspicion of the press (those stories of concentration camps can't be THAT bad), Hitler's wartime strategies, words like "lousy", etc. all hearken back to the Great War. But the connection to modern times is not as much of a focus as the title indicates. Understanding the Great War through British literature is what I came away with as the theme of this book.

Rating:
Summary: the Why, not so much the What
Review: Keegan does a better job of explaining the "what" of war and his volume on WW I is superb. But ever since I first heard of Pickett's charge, I always wondered what why the soldiers would so willingly march to their deaths. This volume explores that issue through the literature of the period. It is a densely constructed book filled with literary criticism and quotations of long forgotten poetry and fiction. Unless you are familiar with the language of literary criticism written for an academic audience -- you WILL be consulting a dictionary quite often just to grasp the meaning of a paragraph.

In fact, the text is more of a literary criticism of the writings from the period than a social or military history. That's not so bad as the literature reviewed owes its all to the war and the nuances of the literature are important. When the book was written, the author was a professor of English and was making his name as a scholar in the field - not a social historian. Nevertheless, it is a superb mid-point in a study of WW-I.

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Summary: This stands alone.
Review: One of the most remarkable non-fiction works I have ever read. Picking up this book you may think you've got a hold of a historiography of some sort or other. It isn't, but you won't be disappointed.

Paul Fussel has written an excellent literary history of the effects of the Great War on the intelligensia of early twentieth century England. The great writers and poets of the age who fought, sometimes died, in the struggle, wrote their poetry and prose.

Through it Fussel explores the effects of the war not only on the writers but on the society which they came from. The tremendous slaughter (250,000 lost in a few weeks attempting to take the village of Passchendale, over 800,000 in the battle of the Somme), the stupidity of the British leadership ("Lions led by donkeys" said Churchill of the Army) and the ravaged psyches of the survivors.

All this led to the war's impact on the poetry and writing of the survivors. Men like Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Blunden and others poured their experiences out on paper. Fussel analyzes them and compares them with writers before the Great War and with writers effected by World War II.

In the 25th anniversary edition of this book Fussel reflects that he wishes he'd not relied on older forms of literary criticism. I disagree, while he doesn't use any elements of post-modern criticism in his work, by not using it the work remains timeless.

Works like this are rare. Intelligent and literary, The Great War and Modern Memory really does stand alone. The Modern Library ranked it as one of the best 100 non-fiction works of the twentieth century. They'll get no argument from me.

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Summary: Simply One of the Finest Critical Books Ever Written
Review: Our American culture currently values works of scholarship and criticism less than a Big Gulp mainly because most scholars in the humanities have ceased talking to the general public and speak only to one another. This book, published in 1976, is perhaps the last example of what it means to be a humanist in the sense that one seeks an understanding of history, of human culture and failing, rather than using scholarship to justify political cant.

This gulf between scholars and the general culture is one of the results of the Great War, as Fussell reads the calamity. Fussell examines the breakdown of previous ideas of cultures in the context mainly of English poetry, showing the reader how the unprecedented violence and degradation of trench warfare stripped Western Culture bare, destroying Romanaticism, and allowing moderism to rise in its wake.

Fussell examines in depth certain aspects of the experience, for example the chapter titled "Myth, Ritual, and Romance" explores the way soldiers used their cultural understandings to make sense of their experience, or in some ways to control the nearly random destruction affecting them. The discussion on the symbolic value of the number 3 in the Great War is deep and enlightening.

Some may disagree with Fussell's interpretation of the experience of the Great War, however, few have written a book of any type that come close to the intense qualities in GW&MM. It's written with a purgative urgency; Fussell as a former infantryman in WWII must present a voice for his brothers. In this way, you may read GW&MM as a testament that far exceeds the cold and programmatic works that now pass as literary criticism.

Tobias Wolff and I once discussed this book and he said of it "Once you read The Great War and Modern Memory you feel civilized." I could not agree more.

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Summary: The Great War in British Literature
Review: Paul Fussell draws an exceedingly thin line between history and literary criticism in his telling how the Great War will endure modern memory from the British perspective. Fussell analyzes a vast array of poetry, memoirs, and prose-written both during and after the war-to convey the experiences and emotions of British officers and men who took part in such horrible battles as: the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele. Fussell illustrates how the basic elements of literature such as irony, metaphor, and myth appear throughout the literary works of Thomas Hardy, Seigfried Sassoon and Robert Graves to name a few. Fussell is not out to claim that truth is stranger than fiction, however. On the contrary, he argues that fiction closely parallels truth and, it is these literary devises that have ingrained the memory of the Great War into our consciousness. Many believe that the Great War sparked the advent of modernism, and that the lives of a whole generation of youth that came of age during that war was forever changed. Fussell attempts to prove that nowhere is this more apparent than in the British literature published in the years following World War I. Fussell chose primarily British literature for his study. This is not merely an attempt to narrow the focus of his study, but rather an Anglophilic obsession for the British classical literary tradition at the expense of other combatants; the French, Germans, and to a lesser degree, the Americans. Fussell levels a number of harsh criticisms at American writers, particularly Earnest Hemingway, claiming they existed in a literary vacuum "devoid of a Chaucer, a Spencer, a Shakespeare." Fussell points out that, just prior to World War I, England had undergone a literary surge that had transcended existing class structures. Though organized reading groups at Workman's institutes and the Home Reading Union those of modest origins, it was hoped, would rise in class standing. According to Fussell, no effort was spared. Devouring the best the British had to offer, the author contends that the British population as a whole became "not merely literate but vigorously literary." Unfortunately, Fussell fails to mention the inclusion of women in this literary upsurge as well as barely mentioning women writers, if at all. Fussell analyzes and interprets the literature of the Great War with surgical precision. The author gives some fine examples of wartime poetry, especially the works of Seigfried Sassoon and Robert Graves. Fussell plays particular attention to the element of irony, its construction of themes and its influence on future generations of wartime writers. As Fussell points out, "the Great War was more ironic than any other in that its beginnings were more innocent." The British went to war in a gentlemanly and sporting manner even going so far as to kick a football as they advanced towards the enemy trenches. Fussell emphasizes the impact these seemingly insignificant events fuelled by irony have on one's memory, however, fails to present any evidence other than the literature itself. The point is that Fussell's strength lies in literary theory, not history. All too often, the author engages in broad generalizations when he steps out of his area of expertise (literary criticism). Yet this is one of the first works to apply literary criticism to an historical even, thus it enjoys classic status.