Customer Reviews

Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Fussell's work is searingly honest and forthright. He treats war as the unrelieved hell it is, not from the position of those who favor war, or those who are opposed to it, but from those who are on the ground doing the fighting and the dying.And more than this, his book also addresses the corrosive influences of money, advertising, and authoritarianism that has replaced critical thought and learning in this country. We have become the Faustian culture that we were warned about half a century ago---the culture that replaces all its values of honesty, integrity, achievement, learning, for material gain that eats away at the foundations of culture. And yet we will survive; for like the lonely priests who in the year 1100 kept the ancient world alive in remote places like Ireland and Spain, thinkers and writers like Fussell are preserving culture and ideals against the onslaught of modern day Visigoths who have decamped in the courtyard. A singular achievement that is moving and provocative. Only ninnies at the Kirkus Review would be bothered by such blatant honesty.

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.

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.

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.

for anyone who ever experienced ground combat,regardless of conflict,this memoir by one of our most highly respected literary scholars,stands as the ultimate tribute.more than a book,it is an instructional text on how a sane and rational man who has experienced the absolute horror of armed conflict from the viewpoint of the infantry soldier,may maintain some semblance of sanity in an insane world. those of us who share that part of his backround,owe an unpayable debt to him. in a way,he has become what one of his subjects was in his earlier'the great war and modern memory'. it was wilfred owen,poet/soldier who gave us our warnings,paul fussel has done the same and we still don't quite get it.

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

This is Fussell's life memoir rather than one focused solely on war-time experiences but his time in the army had a marked impact on everything that came after and the exploration of this is engrossing.

Fussell served, very reluctantly, as a junior officer in F Co, 410th Infantry Regt, 103rd Infantry Division. He first sees the front in the Vosges and is stunned to find German dead who are clearly children. He is not impressed with his unit in general (it was `lazy' and rarely dug foxholes) and more specifically with the mediocre officers who issued unimaginative orders safely far from the front line. He wasn't so fortunate himself and he very much participates in battle, being attacked by 6th SS Mountain at one point. He does succeed in inflicting loss on the enemy before in turn becoming, in his view, an almost pre-ordained casualty himself. This episode is used to commence his narrative as well as introduce his ongoing theme that war was an utterly irredeemable tragedy. It also left him with considerable guilt regarding his personal conduct on the day.

To put Fussell's military element in perspective, Pearl Harbor happens on page 65. There is then the business of basic and then officer training, much of it sharply and deliciously ridiculed, with the irreverencies of soldiers highlighted. And he notes the irony that the hard training he despised, trimmed his considerable flab and made him feel physically fantastic. He is wounded on page 143 and is discharged on page 171, but with a hatred of the army so intense that he readily assisted later youths to avoid service in Vietnam. He reflects that there were many ways to be guilty in this period.

With his themes established, Fussell indulges himself by flashing-back to his childhood. It is quite a privileged one too, his family is not affected by The Depression and he receives a full and extensive education. Then follows adolescence and junior college, where he recounts his enthusiasms, ROTC, dating and so on. There are a few startling things to be found here, it is a book very much for adults. There are also some extremely funny passages too and this continues throughout. Fussell is adept at identifying the ironies in life and satirises them mercilessly. Some of this is confronting though and Fussell has viewpoints that some will find awkward.
Principally, Fussell loathed the army. He detested the way it treated human beings and as an extremely intelligent individual he saw ever so clearly that he himself was totally expendable. Regardless of his education, his background, his potential as a person, he was now simply fated to fight and statistically be a casualty in a war that no longer made sense. As time went on this savage cynicism develops and spreads. His politics are influenced accordingly and he grows to see other injustices and hypocrisies in American society. He was on many fronts a very angry young man.

He stays angry too. When he becomes a professor of English Literature, working in a number of esteemed institutions, he finds much to be critical of. He feels confronted by the same `institutional fraud' he encountered in the army and he rails against it. He is sometimes scorning of colleagues but he also goes on to describe himself as "impudent, insolent, sarcastic, and ostentatiously clever and supercilious". No arguments there (and it is intriguing to think what sort of person he might have been without his military service). He could easily be written off as a snob but the self depreciating humour mollifies this sufficiently for me (on the outbreak of war, "the Fussell family deplored having to black out the windows of the beach house.") His professional qualifications shine through with his prose. His vocabulary is formidable and he quotes extensively and while some points were over my head, it is a densely considered, powerfully delivered summation of his life's journey. But it is a journey that is always shadowed by the dread days of 1944-5. Fussell utterly refuses to let the `Good War' view gentle his rage. But when he can quote its impacts on innocents, like the horrendously burned little British boy (a story that haunts me) his point is powerfully made. It is war and the damage it does to people that he hates. The way he explores this is fascinating. Fussell sees similarities between the infantry and Labor in a Socialist sense but Nazi Germany forced the war on to the world and he was one of many who just had to `suck it up'. Yes the army and the society that produced it was imperfect. Yet people sometimes have to deal with the circumstances that confront them, not the circumstances they would prefer. He seems to ignore this and fails to sheet the responsibility to where it really belongs. Rather he rails against the organization that he participated through. It is a absorbing perspective. Perhaps he sees the first as making excuses and he sticks to his truth unflinchingly. This honesty is evident elsewhere, he is also quite hard on himself for various failings and mistakes.

Interestingly, he strongly approved of the dropping of the atomic bombs (as a young officer , now with 45th Division, on his way to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan), noting caustically that those who decried this action, `while certainly demonstrating the fineness of their moral weave' also exposed their considerable personal distance from the infantry in the front line.

This is a remarkable book. It is insightful, extensive, exceedingly literate yet deliciously profane at times and as a memoir, approaches WW2 with a very different focus. Fussell has a clear point that he wants to make and he does so powerfully and relentlessly. He reveals with great clarity how the war impacted on his life and it is very valuable. As for his personal revelations of combat, these are sufficient to establish his credentials but they are less extensive than in the memoirs at the top of my list, so only three stars in that sense. Even so, his contribution to this topic is extraordinary and it is a five star book in all other respects. War can be hell in many ways and many days. Highly Recommended.

I read DOING BATTLE over a year ago while doing research for a WWII era biography I was writing. I was looking for memoirs of wartime that would reflect the times. Fussell's book did that and more. He wrote of his early life in California and college in Pomona, then of his military experience, including the serious wounds he received as a twenty year-old infantry lieutenant. And then of his recovery in military hospitals where "in my loneliness I enacted a version of Frederic Henry's obsession with Catherine Barkley. I fell in love with a nurse ..." This went nowhere, as Fussell never even learned her name. He also talked of his distaste for another junior officer's task, that of censoring the letters of his men. He realized intuitively how insulting it was to the enlisted men, many of whom were years older than he. His account of the circumstances of his own injuries are matter-of-fact. An incoming German shell exploded right above Fussell and two other GIs.

"Its intolerably loud metallic CLANG! did more than deafen me. It sent red-hot metal tearing into my body. One piece went into my right thigh. Another entered my back. When I got my hearing and my senses back, the first thing I did was take a deep breath to see if my lung had been penetrated. When I found it had not, I felt less panicky and, despite the indescribable pain, able to look about me."

The two men flanking Fussell when the shell burst were both killed, a quirky coincidence he never forgot. Besides his account of the war, Fussell continues his story through grad school at Harvard and several teaching jobs thereafter. Given my own military experiences and subsequent return to college and grad school, I found it all most interesting, including the academic intrigue and competition. Paul Fussell has examined his life carefully, and despite numerous books published and other prestigious accomplishments, he still manages to take himself with a grain of salt. His style reminds me just a bit of Andy Rooney, that old 60 Minutes guy, who, incidentally, wrote his own fine WWII memoir, MY WAR (see my review of that). Just last year, Fussell was one of the featured principals, along with his friend Sam Hynes, interviewed extensively by Ken Burns for his PBS documentary, THE WAR. Fussell has been "doing battle" in one important cause or another his whole life, for which I salute him. I enjoyed his book tremendously and recommend it highly. - Tim Bazzett, author of LOVE, WAR & POLIO

"Doing Battle: The Making Of A Skeptic" By Paul Fussell
Little Brown And Company, Boston. 1996.

An exceedingly well written biography of an intellectual of the last half of the 20th Century. Well written, as to be expected of a person with so many degrees in English. I do not think that he likes "vocational" degrees, such as engineering degrees, but I suspect that he enjoys using modern word processors that engineers have developed. However, this well written book presents the life story of person, who appears, sometimes, as an anarchist, or perhaps a nihilist, and sometimes a hypocrite, and sometimes as a loner.

For example, on page 97, he describes the members of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) as very angry young men "...who had been luxuriating in colleges." Of course, Paul Fussell had not been "luxuriating" in Pasadena where his father was building a new house while the rest of the nation was selling apples on corners during the Great Depression. While at Pasadena, he attended Pomona College, (of the Claremont Group of five colleges ... one of my daughters graduated from Scripps College), snuggled in a New England look-alike green belt in brown California. Because Paul Fussell was privileged to attend such a fancy college when most Americans did not go on to "Higher" education, the author had the opportunity to become an officer in the United States Army. From this seat of wisdom, he was able to judge the combat performance of the 29th Infantry Division, a National Guard Unit...which, in turn, prompted a reply in Joseph Balkoski's book "Beyond The Beachhead".

Most of Fussell's book, "Doing Battle", deals with his career in academia. I do not think that the author was ever happy. At the beginning of his career, the author was "...condemned to an atmosphere of insignificance and ineffectiveness..." at a mere girls' school. (page 213). Interestingly enough, the comments of that famous (infamous) Senator from Wisconsin are confirmed in Fussell's book. Universities were godless places. Fussell reports that a Catholic professor was surprised to find so many atheists.
Page 203: "...what a pederastic paradise for some graduate students Harvard had been." Heidelberg was more efficient than American universities. After I finished his book, I could only think of the comment I learned in the United States Navy, "My heart pumps purple panther piss for him."

Professor Fussell's book appears to have been heavily influenced by Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That" - and it doesn't suffer much by comparison. A well-written, thoughtful account of his early years and how his WWII experiences shaped the man he is today.