Company K (Library of Alabama Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Almost a Classic
Review: March makes a compelling case in this text that he should be well entrenched in the second tier of American authors, if not the first. His WWI recollections do a fine job of bringing out the terrors and guilts of a war long forgotton and little remembered, except for the short period of the Twenties. If there is any shortcoming in this fine work, it is that it draws far too much from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthologies. My guess is that March, who was trained as a lawyer like Masters (a former partner of the unethical (...) Clarence Darrow) grasped onto Masters' then-current work . It's not a heroic idea, but one that's occurred to me. In any event, Company K is a work that ought to be read far more than it is a century later. WWI [is] seldom remembered as the great trauma that it was in the US. Here's a book that tells how bad it was, and more importantly, why.

Rating:
Summary: Almost a Classic
Review: March makes a compelling case in this text that he should be well entrenched in the second tier of American authors, if not the first. His WWI recollections do a fine job of bringing out the terrors and guilts of a war long forgotton and little remembered, except for the short period of the Twenties. If there is any shortcoming in this fine work, it is that it draws far too much from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthologies. My guess is that March, trained as a lawyer like Masters (a former partner of the unethical (...) Clarence Darrow) grasped on the then-current work of Masters. It's not a heroic idea, but one that's occurred to me. In any event, Company K is a work that ought to be read far more than it is a century later. WWI [is] seldom remembered as such in the US. Here's a book that tells that it was, and more importantly, why.

Rating:
Summary: a classic veteran's tale from WW1
Review: Slaughterhouse-five, and Catch-22 both borrowed from a powerful predecessor. Company-k is a simple read, short chapters each one a character of many narratives. Each one an insightful and heart-rending tale. It would be easy to ignore Company-K and most don't know it - except that it's written by a man who was there. Hemingway glorified war made it seem almost fun - March tells it as it was. Only Johnny Got His Gun, and All Quite On the Western Front come close to this passionate and shocking book.

Rating:
Summary: a surprisingly modern old book
Review: This edition of "Company K," by William March (a native of Mobile, graduate of The University of Alabama's law school, and WW I veteran), is one in a series called The Library of Alabama Classics, and it warrants its status as a classic. It's a beautiful little book, nicely typeset in a somewhat nostalgic manner, and deserves to be better known than it is--as does its author. Kudos to Alabama's UP for making this book available in paperback for a wide audience.

The book, first published in 1933, is a collection of short first-person narratives by the members of a company caught in the frontline in the first World War. Remarkable is March's ability to place himself (and the reader) in the positions of a great many very different characters--the company is a cross section of American society. This, his first novel, shows that March is an intelligent and sensitive storyteller.

More remarkable, perhaps, is how easily this book might be hypertexted--since all the narratives intersect, and various characters appear in various guises in other's narratives, it would lend itself easily to an HTML version in which a reader could click their way through the book without having to follow the book's order. Surely March must have seen this as a possible way of reading, since the chapter headings are the characters' names, allowing a reader of the book to easily flip from one character to another. The book, which seems to be suitable more for a spatial than a chronological way of reading, disrupts the boundaries of its printed format. I don't mean to call March a post-structuralist avant la lettre, but it is a feature that enhances, in my opinion, one of the themes of the book: the horror of war recognizes no hierarchy; war disrupts the human order.

As for horror, there is plenty of that. The point of view March has chosen is excellent in that it allows for multiple readings of the same event (for instance, the unnecessary and criminal shelling of a recon party); some of the voices come from beyond the grave and are particularly chilling.

One final note on the edition: it is introduced (not designed, as the Amazon heading states erroneously) by Phil Beidler, a professor of American lit at U of A. Beidler has shown a great interest in and loyalty to the literature of Alabama (see, for instance, his anthologies "The Art of Fiction in the Heart of Dixie" and "Many Voices, Many Rooms"), and his introduction to this book is insightful and touching. Beidler obviously knows his stuff; he knows both war and Alabama.

I believe that this book, as has been noted by others, is of the rank of Remarque's "All Quiet," and it is a wonderful and chilling read. Like most good war novels, it says "don't let this happen again," while realizing that it probably will, knowing human nature.

Rating:
Summary: a surprisingly modern old book
Review: This edition of "Company K," by William March (a native of Mobile, graduate of The University of Alabama's law school, and WW I veteran), is one in a series called The Library of Alabama Classics, and it warrants its status as a classic. It's a beautiful little book, nicely typeset in a somewhat nostalgic manner, and deserves to be better known than it is--as does its author. Kudos to Alabama's UP for making this book available in paperback for a wide audience.

The book, first published in 1933, is a collection of short first-person narratives by the members of a company caught in the frontline in the first World War. Remarkable is March's ability to place himself (and the reader) in the positions of a great many very different characters--the company is a cross section of American society. This, his first novel, shows that March is an intelligent and sensitive storyteller.

More remarkable, perhaps, is how easily this book might be hypertexted--since all the narratives intersect, and various characters appear in various guises in other's narratives, it would lend itself easily to an HTML version in which a reader could click their way through the book without having to follow the book's order. Surely March must have seen this as a possible way of reading, since the chapter headings are the characters' names, allowing a reader of the book to easily flip from one character to another. The book, which seems to be suitable more for a spatial than a chronological way of reading, disrupts the boundaries of its printed format. I don't mean to call March a post-structuralist avant la lettre, but it is a feature that enhances, in my opinion, one of the themes of the book: the horror of war recognizes no hierarchy; war disrupts the human order.

As for horror, there is plenty of that. The point of view March has chosen is excellent in that it allows for multiple readings of the same event (for instance, the unnecessary and criminal shelling of a recon party); some of the voices come from beyond the grave and are particularly chilling.

One final note on the edition: it is introduced (not designed, as the Amazon heading states erroneously) by Phil Beidler, a professor of American lit at U of A. Beidler has shown a great interest in and loyalty to the literature of Alabama (see, for instance, his anthologies "The Art of Fiction in the Heart of Dixie" and "Many Voices, Many Rooms"), and his introduction to this book is insightful and touching. Beidler obviously knows his stuff; he knows both war and Alabama.

I believe that this book, as has been noted by others, is of the rank of Remarque's "All Quiet," and it is a wonderful and chilling read. Like most good war novels, it says "don't let this happen again," while realizing that it probably will, knowing human nature.