Customer Reviews

The Great War and Modern Memory

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I am the kind of history and war buff that loves to read straightforward war books: books about battles, generals, soldiers, tactics, blunders, strategies, weapons and so on. Having read a review of Fussell's book a few years ago and thinking it was another "straightforward" book about World War One, I added it to my Christmas list. I received it as a gift this year (along with about 6 other books, all novels) and I decided to browse it for fifteen minutes before diving into one of the novels. What struck me at first was that it was NOT a straightforward telling of WWI, and that if I had looked at the book in a bookstore I probably would have thought it "boring" and set it back on the shelf. You see, in this book there are no detailed accounts of the Somme or in-depth analysis of Ypres.

However, having book in hand, I was immediately drawn into Fussell's examination and analysis of literature, essays, poetry, letters home, theater and culture on the front and in England during WWI in order to paint a picture of the British soldiers' experience during WWI. It is a fascinating book on many levels and examines war, in this instance The Great War, from a completely different aspect than I have ever seen before. Fussell illuminates much more clearly what happened to the boys/men in the trenches than anything I have ever read before. For instance, has any other book captured so vividly the oppressiveness of being in a trench for days when all you see is a sliver of sky and the horrific irony of morning and evening stand-to's? I don't think I have read a book that made me sympathize and empathize with the WWI soldier more than this book. It is a deeply moving and touching book and really drives home the futility of war.

I know that this book will not appeal to everyone (as I said earlier, it probably wouldn't have appealed to me had I picked it up in a bookstore), but I believe that most people will find it fascinating if they just put their minds to it. Fussell's book will reward those seeking a deeper understanding of the WWI soldiers' experience.

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.

Once upon a time, I was actually a witness in a civil trial. I was called upon to explain, as an editor of an employee manual, my use of the word "draft," as in, "This employee manual is a draft." The word "Draft" meant one thing to me ("welcoming improvements") and another thing entirely to my employer, one of the parties in the suit (to him it meant, "I don't have to follow the parts that are inconvenient, like due process"). The judge blasted me exasperatedly, "Well, doesn't the word mean exactly what it says?" I answered him, "Your honor, no word ever means exactly what it says---connotation changes all the time."

The subject of the connotations of words recalls one of my favorite books of all time, Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modrn Memory." The thesis of this masterwork suggests that the modern world began on July 1, 1916, on a trench-riddled field near the River Somme, where Sir Douglas Haig, commander of British forces, sent 110,000 men against a German force one-seventh that size in "the largest engagement fought since the beginnings of civilization" (as Fussell puts it). On this one day, 60,000 men were killed or wounded, "the record so far." Fussell argues that the world changed enormously after the Somme affair (the surviving soldiers reserved earthier epithets for the campaign).

Fussell's use of the word "record," with its echoes of sporting statistics, is indicative of the innocence with which British soldiers entered into warfare. There are documented accounts in which British soldiers actually preceded a charge by kicking a soccer ball toward the opposing trenches; that sort of gesture quickly lost its luster in the face of a military revolution that saw the first uses of machine guns, tanks, and poison gas.

How innocent was the era preceding the Great War? As Fussell says, "The literary scene is hard to imagine." There was no "Waste Land," no "Ulysses," no "Cantos," no Kafka, no "Lady Chatterley's Lover," no "Valley of Ashes" from "The Great Gatsby." In the literature of war before the Great War, "high" diction prevailed. Gallant warriors assailed the foe, keen to take the field in a contest in which fate might leave their comrades among the fallen, facing the heavens, their limbs askew, their breasts slumbering, the red sweet wine of youth staining the battleground of honor. After 1916, the disillusioned men and the writers who chronicled their actions were more likely to characterize their experiences in the manner of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est," in which "the blood/Come[s] gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,/ Bitter as the cud/Of vile, incurable sores . . . ." Only the generals, "the enemy behind," who were steeped in Kipling and Tennyson, could have had the obtusenesss to promulgate at the end of the war, with no apparent awareness of its irony, the following directive: "There will be no intercourse of any description with the enemy."

The vocabulary of the Great War has insinuated itself so firmly into our consciousness that it's hard to recognize its origins. The source of "entrenched" is obvious. "Crummy" and "lousy" originated in the ubiquitous infestations of lice. Spending several years in France caused the word "keepsake" to be replace by the French word "souvenir." Economic terms like "the private sector" and "rank and file" were appropriated from the war. Even an expression as innocuous as "Help our fund drive over the top" owes its imagery to a military strategy of attrition that, in its incompetence, might, in another age, have elicited prosecutions for war crimes---against generals for needlessly killing their own men. Perhaps even Fussell himself did not recognize the irony in his use of the word "civilization" to describe the evolution of humankind to a place where such actions could lead to such words.

A review of the book production, not the contents.

I would not recommend the 25th Anniversary Hardback Edition, simply on account of poor production values:

1. It has a perfect, not a stitched binding, so it doesn't open out flat but snaps back together like a theatre seat.

2. The type is actually difficult to read because the ink used is shiny and the typeface is not crisp. It looks to me like the wrong ink and paper were used - they don't work together.

I have given 5 stars so as not to interfere with the rating of the book itself, which is of course superb; but I would give this particular edition a miss.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Picking up this book I was a little naive in my thinking. I assumed that it would be an easy read, a comparative study on the effect of Great War Authors and Writings had on Modern Literature. Yet, this book was a continuous struggle, not for its dullness but by the vast amount of information that the author is able to throw at the reader. The author is without a doubt an expert on this time periods literature, his ability to find comparisons with the Modern world for me was astounding. The highest praise perhaps is that this is the kind of book that I would want to write but never could. This book is not for the lighthearted, it is better to have a knowledge of literature that has come out of the Great War but is not required. This is a book with a heart and soul, shining light on generation that is fading into the past.

On one level, Fussell writes about World War I, and his unsparing depiction of the industrialized killing in this first "modern" war will acquaint readers with a war that now seems very distant. On the second level, he shows how British World War I soldiers viewed their experience through the literary and popular culture they brought to the trenches--through ideas of the pastoral, of epic sacrifice, of manly strength and beauty. Fussell brilliantly links "The Oxford Book of English Verse" and the battlefields of France. His discussion of how the poppy came to be a symbol of this war is alone worth the price of the book. Finally, and most interestingly, there is Fussell's idea that this particular past is not distant at all. He not only points out how accounts of the second World War were influenced by accounts of the first, but suggests how some of the ways we currently think about war are shaped by the Great War. One wonders, in the midst of it, what myths of our own we bring to our conceptions of the War On Terror.