Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's classic The Great War and Modern Memory remains one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. In its panoramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world.
Now, in Wartime, Paul Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict in which he himself fought, to weave a more intensely personal and wide-ranging narrative. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on soldiers and civilians. He compellingly depicts the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II by analyzing the wishful thinking and the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality; by describing the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most importantly, by emphasizing the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity, and wit.
Of course, no book of Fussell's would be complete without serious attention to the literature of the time. He offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world. In this stunning volume, Fussell conveys the essence of that war as no other writer before him has.
Paul Fussell, a distinguished literary historian, served as an infantry officer during World War II, and the experience has haunted him ever since. It has also informed his books, among them The Great War in Modern Memory and Wartime, a book that is part memoir, part cultural-critical study, and that is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of conflict. Fussell conjures the small details of battlefield experience -- the way a bird's song falls silent just before an artillery barrage, the curious plunking sound a spinning bullet makes, the drift of smoke over an obliterated village; he also evokes the Zeitgeist of the war years, an era when hometown grocery stores bore signs like this one: "Did you drown a sailor today because YOU bought a lamb chop without giving up the required coupons?"
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
These are scholarly essays but not particulary interesting to read:
I bought this book erroneously thinking that it would be an interesting read to complement Sledge's With The Old Breed and China Marine, but I was disappointed with his academic/scholarly style of writing. It seemed as if Fussell was writing for an audience of literary peers, rather than for a general audience wanting to gain insight into the plight of a WW2 solider. I didn't gain much from the "essays", except his disdain for the violence, the absurd romanticism, and the "unshared" sacrafices that surround... more info
Fussell seeks to "balance the scales.":
I first learned of Paul Fussell when I read his book entitled "Class: A Guide through the American Status System." It was there that I first encountered his sardonic wit and his superb eye for the ironic and absurd. He brings the same to Wartime, but in a more personal way, since it is his own service as an infantry officer in Europe in WWII that informs his perceptions. Throughout the book Fussell seeks to undermine what he calls the "high-mindedness" of WWII, or the "rationalizations and euphemisms people... more info
Finally -- The Truth About World War II:
Paul Fussell's brilliant, earthy account of the lives of everyday soldiers in WWII is vastly superior to the shallow pap of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, or the pretentious PBS documentary series, The War. My highest recommendation!
understanding World War II:
Cynical, skeptical, and above all ironic, WARTIME explores -- from a social, cultural, literary, and psychological point of view -- what one might call the underbelly of World War II, that wide world beneath the myths of the "good war," the "greatest generation," and "band of brothers." Fussell, who gave World War I similar treatment in THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY, strives not so much to malign as to understand, to put events in perspective, to seek the truth through all the propaganda and distortion... more info
