Customer Reviews

Guard of Honor (Modern Library)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book exemplifies the "quiet craftsmanship" for which Cozzens has been praised (in Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, I believe). His style is clean and understated; his plotting is as always complex yet tight; his observations of people are dead-on. But what, in my opinion, really puts this novel above Cozzens's other works is its portrayal of the "life" of a modern complex organization (in this case, the U.S. Army during WWII). American society's transformation from an individualistic focus to an organizational one, which reached completion during FDR's presidency, is one of the most significant developments during the past century and a quarter. Yet almost no novelist has attempted to deal with this transformation artistically, and certainly none has done it as well as Cozzens does here. This book's straightforward style conceals its immense importance.

Although the once enormously popular James Gould Cozzens is all but forgotten today, his 1948 novel GUARD OF HONOR is a big, splendid, riveting piece of work which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The action, presented essentially in real time, centers on three days at a big Florida airbase in l943 and its hapless new commander. What makes this book particularly noteworthy is how the many threads of its tremendously complex plot effortlessly come together - rather like a very skilled wind band leaderlessly playing one of the Mozart serenades. It convincingly shows how small, seemingly random events can collide and build to something far greater than their sum. I've been pushing this neglected minor masterpiece for decades. I was delighted, therefore, to learn that GUARD OF HONOR been reissued by the Modern Library. The event was marked by a generous tribute to the book by, rather surprisingly, the jazz critic Whitney Balliett in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books.

Cozzens' masterful social novels, of which "Guard of Honor" is the towering apex, have been erased from the history of American literature by its guardian - the academic establishment - because of his thorny conservatism and unadorned steel-and-rivets prose style. It's our loss. If you compare the ambition and artistic discipline of this wise and sober novel to, say, the latest annual installment of navel-gazing from Philip Roth (to name a writer who enjoys a comparable level of esteem today), you can only shake your head at the profound dumbing-down of our culture.

Inasmuch as only a fraction of any armed force directly participates in combat, this stunningly broad study of a Florida air force base in the latter stage of World War II is actually more relevant to the history of our participation in that struggle than a book like "The Naked and the Dead". And its look at an early chapter in the unfinished story of race integration in America is arguably more germane than ever, although its conclusions do not sit comfortably. (No televised talking head could hope to express them and still keep his job.) If you're interested in a truly adult novel, in the best sense of the word, you can't do much better than this one.

Guard of Honor is a book about fighting a war in which not a single bullet is fired in anger. Readers looking for blood and glory will find it here only in the refracted light of the home front. But, this book IS about blood and glory; as well as boredom, loneliness, stupidity, comradeship, insanity, bureaucracy, death and many other things associated with the armed forces.

Cozzens decision to place his novel in Florida during World War II actually allows him to analyze the military culture in the minutest detail without the adrenaline distraction that actual combat would produce. It's a risky choice, but it works brilliantly.

The story contains a bewildering number of characters but is centered around two generous and kind men: Colonel Ross and Captain Hicks. Ross represents the command structure trying to hold an unwieldy organization together through the insanity of war. Hicks is the common man thrown into the same situation. How their lives play out is the heart of the book.

If you want explosions and gore, this book is not for you. If you want to know how the military lives, thinks and breathes read this book and cherish its portrait of a world very different from civilian life.

James Gould Cozzens is the antithesis of Joseph Heller. Guard of Honor occurs in wartime America. It occurs over a three day period and is centered around an event that has racial and class undertones. It is populated with flesh and blood people and not charicatures. It has a point of view but that is revealed gradually and over the course of the entire book. Built, bit by bit, as the players in this drama come into view, interact with each other and depart to be seen again later, sometimes in a different light; seen from someone else's perspective, filtered through the lens of events recalled or experienced. People are revealed by how they react to other people in diverse situations undergoing set backs or good fortune. Heller wished to show that war is ludicrous, Cozzens wished to show that war is, and that people are complex and that what they do and what they think about what they do, matters. That actions taken today and the next day make us who we will be tomorrow and that there are no inconsequential choices. He shows that venality is the default setting and conscious effort must be made to overcome it. Reading this book is like looking in a mirror and hoping that you can do something about what you see before it's too late. My only quibble with Cozzens is his tendency to drop acronyms, literary allusions and unattributed quotes throughout his work leaving you feeling slightly inadequate to the task of reading him.

I come to Cozzens late. I intend to read this book often.

If a contemporary reader is looking for one novel that captures with unerring precision the nature of the military and society in World War II, look no further than "Guard of Honor." The setting is authentic, and the characters are drawn with abundant sympathy and an utter lack of remorse. The issues, the personalities, the key incident -- all reflect Cozzens' skill deep insight into human nature and the nature of military bureaucracies, the latter resulting from his service on the Air Corps staff during the war. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.

The best book about the U.S. Army during the Second World War, Guard of Honor is a forgotten classic and would be turned into a 4-hour movie if anyone could be bothered. A tour-de-force of detail, simple and accurate. A Dickens of a novel

A novel of intricate characterizations of a huge number of participants in a bureaucracy, Guard of Honor would probably appeal more to lovers of Great Literature than to lovers of a Good Story Well Told. It is a very long and detailed book. What plot there is involves attempts of some of the lead characters to avoid doing the morally-correct action. Few characters are likeable; few have much integrity. The author likes very long sentences; many paragraphs are absolutely incomprehensible. The ending was quite unsatisfactory to me. However, all those characters are distinctive and memorable - not a small achievement. And, the author certainly understands the dynamics of a bureaucracy. The book is enjoying a small revival due to a rave review in the American Scholar magazine.

Guard of Honor is NOT about World War II, though it is convincingly set at a Florida airbase during the War. It is about human character, the ways we create situations in our (and others') lives and how we solve those situations -- including the situation of racial prejudice. But it's not a book about race, either. Read it -- you'll go back to it again and again, year after year, for new lessons that still apply to our lives today. Persevere.

Unlike many war books, which focus on either the glory or horror of battle, or both, Cozzens looks at troubles on the home front during World War II. His setting is a Florida airbase, and the action centers around the arrival of black pilots who are being trained as part of an experiment in integrating the cockpit. A few whites support the effort, a few more oppose it, but most characters are more concerned with their own self interest than with larger moral issues. The common desire to win the war doesn't eliminate social problems at home, nor does it trump human pettiness. Cozzens weaves together several interlocking stories, and while the final fabric lacks the exquisite integration that a truly great writer might achieve, it all manages to hold together in the end. Likewise his prose, while occasionally capable of taking flight, is generally adequate but workmanlike. This book is well worth reading, but go into it expecting a very good novel, not a towering classic of WWII literature.