Customer Reviews

Company K (Library Alabama Classics)

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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.

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.

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.

Do not take it from me, Graham Greene, one of the most respected names in Twentieth Century Fiction hails March's "Company K" as the greatest of all anti-war novels, while Hemingway thought it superior to almost all other WWI novels. This novel is not an almost-classic, it is a classic, borrowing the format made popular by Edgar Lee Masters, March expounds on the concept of individual soldier stories encompassing the full breath of the war. This novel is as appropriate now as it ever was in the post-WWI era. This novel is a must read for anyone remotely concerned with WWI and the impact war has on the survivors.

Old Men Still Send Young Men to War.

This is the story of those young men who fight those wars. Their stories, not of officers and gentlemen, but of the Dough Boys themselves.

Written as fiction, Company K is, in reality, the true life stories of author William March and his fellow soldiers in Company K. Stories of courage, valor, of fear and cowardice,needless sacrifice and in one case outright murder as enemy soldiers are gunned down in a ravine rather than go through the trouble of getting them to the rear.

This is not about a John-Wayne-war; it is about Sherman's war, the "War-Is-Hell" kind of war, told by men who actually fought it.

It is about American soldiers, but it could be about any soldier under any flag representing any country. It is universal in nature, and could have been written about any and all wars.

It is a masterful piece of work. You may never look at the glory and valor of war in the same way again...And that's a good thing!

Excellent book! War presented as it really was by a gifted author who experienced it! I started reading and was completely captivated, finishing the whole book in a single evening! The book consists of many short vignettes, each narrated by a soldier in company K, in which the soldier relates a particular experience. Some soldiers describe the same experience from different viewpoints. By this means the story is advanced from the beginning of the war to the end, and war itself is presented in all it's ugliness, cruelty, banality, and stupidity. American officers order the murder of prisoners, an exhausted enlisted man murders an officer just so he can rest (and gets away with it!), and mortally wounded soldiers lie screaming for hours in "no man's land" with their guts hanging out. As powerful as All Quiet on the Western Front!

So glad to see this book again. I lent my copy to a Marine buddy many years ago, and after the trouble it was to get a copy back then (pre-internet days), I didn't think I'd ever find another copy. Looks like it is in print and I'm not the only one who thought so highly of this book. A college Prof recommended this as one of the best to come out of the first World War and he was correct. As I recall it opens with a comment from the fictional author's wife/or the actual author's wife commenting that he should have taken out the part where they kill the German prisoners, as if that would change the fact that things like that had happened. That really showed the disconnect between the returning combat veterans and their families and friends who really could never understand what they had seen and done. The only other good WWI fiction that had as much of an impact on me would have been All Quiet on the Western Front or some of Hemingway's short fiction such as Soldier's Home. This is at least on par with those. And I'm glad to see it is still in print or at least some copies are out there so I can replace my long lost copy.

Outstanding narrative on observations and memories of the author's experiences before, during and after WWI that should be available for all history students and readers. Well worth the time reading these short vignettes that really bare his soul. Find it and read it!

If you were every in the military you would recognize most of the types introduced in this book. Amazing how concise each portrait is, and how much each says about the wide range of human emotions and sentiment stirred up by war.

I read this book in High School and ordered it again to read with my daughter. Even though the stories are fictional, this is a great read. It is so interesting to read a story from every member of the troop over time. You get to see the characters from many points of view (sort of like the movie "Ran"). Some of the stories make you laugh and some make you cry. An all round touching book.