While I was reading All Over but the Shoutin (the book I just reviewed), I was also reading All's Quiet on the Western Front. I did not expect two war novels--or, more accurately, two anti-war novels--but that is what I got, though the styles varied vastly. All's Quiet on the Western Front is a traditional war novel, taking place (mostly) in the trenches of World War II. It tells of a group of young German soldiers and how they deal with the war and how the war deals with them. Everyone I know that has read this book rave about it, but I'm sorry to say that I never really got into it. Maybe I'm used to more modern, in-your-face anti-war novles/stories, which I love.
All Over but the Shoutin' probably couldn't even be labeled a war/anti-war novel--Bragg (the memoir's author) only tells one story early on in the book about his father's time in Korea. But that story is told with such skill that it really evokes that gut-wrenching feeling that makes you feel that war is never good. For me, that one story was much more effective than the entire book All's Quiet on the Western Front. But what made Bragg's book even more effective as an anti-war novel was the stories he told about what happened after his father returned from the war. He left a good, decent man and returned scarred man whose only refuge was alcohol. He was always drunk and made his wife and kids live in squalor and in fear of him.
Still, the best anti-war piece I have ever read is a short story by Tim O'Brien called "How to Tell a True War Story." It is a short story in O'Brien's collection of short stories about war called The Things They Carried. There are a lot of very good, highly regarded short stories in this collection, and I would recommend it, though it would probably be very depressing to try to sit and read it cover to cover. This story, more than any other anti-war story/novel/movie/documentary I have ever seen, makes you feel how terrible war is. It doesn't just describe war; it makes you feel it. Its cathartic in that sense--its tragic and sad, but it invokes feelings that, while unpleasant, are good to have because they remind us how terrible war is. I found a link to a pdf (thanks to the University of Wisconsin) of the story if you're interested in reading it: us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/obrien_story.pdf.
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Its been a while since I read it, but I remember that I loved All's Quiet on the Western Front. Having never been to war for myself, I can't really know what it is like. All I can do is imagine who aweful it is. For me, it painted a pretty realistic picture of what war would be like. I remember some different parts where they were stuck in the trenches; these seemed very real and horrific to me.
I always pretend in my mind that I would be awesome in war. Dodging bullets, shooting tanks, thwarting the enemy. But it was about three days ago that I got a paper cut under my fingernail, and every single time I touched something my finger hurt and I did not like it.
Then I thought about 'The Brothers K' and the effect of war on the psyche, and I thought that if a papercut broke me down, then war might be more difficult than previously anticipated. But I've always thought of myself as a codebreaker or windtalker anyways.
Rumbler, your thought that you would always be good in war likely came from the camouflage foam blocks that you had in your home as a child. Many a fine fort was built from those blocks and many a fine battle was simulated. Fortunately, those blocks were made of foam and not of paper, or you probably would have had more paper cuts and a more negative impression of war.
I think you all would be excellent warriors. However, I hope it doesn't come to that. I'm grateful and amazed for all the men and women who have given their lives for our freedom. As well as their families.
Ian, I thought your premise that war stories are really "anti-war" stories to be very profound.
I also loved 'All Quiet on the Western Front' as well. I remember it being harrowing and personal.
I've always meant to see the movie, which won the Oscar for best picture and director in 1920. Haven't gotten around to it yet.
I read the war novel 'Flags of our Fathers' a while ago, and REALLY liked it.
If I'm ever serving in a war I hope my qualifications put me in a training job. Then, Juddy, I'll be sure to train you well. If I'm allowed to waterboard.
well cblakes, you'd have to be a republican to be a proper water-boarder
Did anyone actually read "How to Tell a True War Story"? I would be interested to hear what you thought of it. It really is a worthwhile read.
Ian,
I read it, and at the risk of doing precisely what the author warns against-generalizing-I will summarize it in one phrase: War is amoral.
For me, the most poignant part is where the author describes how war separates you from your ability to think morally. You survive. You think about life and death only, only life and death mean little. Pain means little. Everything blurs into one, indiscernable thing.
I also find it interesting how seeing death repeatedly, and in varying ways, de-moralizes death, pain & suffering, to the point that when a man named Lemon steps on a land mine his friends would sing Lemon tree while cleaning his parts from the surrounding fauna.
The author describes this concept perfectly with his portrayal of the soldier slaughtering the baby water buffalo in view of his peers, taking it as close to death as possible, but not allowing it to die. Throughout that portion I kept thinking "kill it already, put it out of its misery." But he didn't. He kept going. Then, when the others approached the animal, I thought they would end its misery. They did not. They acted amorally.
It would be interesting to study war as one of many examples of how immoral behavior creates amorality--the inability to discern between, or care about, right and wrong.
Ian,
After writing my last post I started thinking about some of my recent experiences in a similar context.
As you know, I'm the Deacon's quorum advisor in our ward. Our Deacon's quorum president, a native of Sierra Leon, lives with his 13-year-old cousin M, also from Sierra Leon.
Last week, M's father died of a heart attack. Saturday I attended his funeral. It was unlike any funeral I had attended before. We entered to music, loud music. Think reggae meets negro spiritual meets mormon hymn. Everybody in the room was singing and dancing. It was as if they were sad that he died and happy that he died at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they were happy he died. I think that they were happy because death is truly a release for a person who lives a very difficult life. M's father grew up in a war-torn nation. For example, his college education was interrupted three times by rebel insurgents who took over the school.
Needless to say, I don't think any of the readers of this board have lived through anything remotely similar to what this man experienced in his lifetime.
One year ago, M's father moved to the U.S., became a CNA and started working at a local nursing home. He died of a heart attack, at a young age, after a very difficult life.
Might our funeral traditions be different if we lived lives as difficult as these people? Where instability and death are more common than stability and calm?
Maybe! Probably!
Literature is wonderful because it increases our perspective and helps us understand why people would act in a certain way. I love that perspective.
You might want to read, "The Soldier's Story" which is a non-fiction book about the writing of war stories/memoirs.
It put things like Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" and O'Brien's works into context.
I like AQWF, in some ways in spite of it's reputation. It's not actually an anti-war novel, per se, because it doesn't have (as most WW1 novels didn't) an intent of motivating the reader against war in general, or that war in specific.
It tells (as most do) a story about the war the writer knew, as the writer recalled it.
There's a lot of conflicted emotion goin on in WW1 memoirs, largely because the writers didn't have those memoirs shaping thier ideas of what the war would be.
I will say, having been to a war (and being an interrogator... I'll just chime in, torture doesn't work, full stop. For more on my thoughts regarding that, just google "pecunium" and "torture", or "interrogation". No intent to offend, but it's a touchy subject with me), they are like everything else, possessed of good and bad, in unequal amounts.
Rumbler, you'd be surprised what you can do.
I don't think that war is, in and of itself, an amoral experience, in either the sense that it's lacking in morals, or completely divorced from "standard" morality. The first is untrue; it has a morality all its own, which may run in some, apparent, congruity with peacetime morality, but has vast areas of non-commensurality; which is why the latter is true.
That understanding (of the localised mores which make up war) is what books, movies, training, and all the imaginings in the world can't get one.
Each war (both the meta-war of the conflict as a whole, and the micro-war of the soldier, and all the various grades of war in between) has it's own localised morality, which is what the memoirist is telling.
Compare Sledge, to Caputo, Harrison (Generals Die in Bed, Canadian, WW1) to Heller, or Dan Cragg's "The Soldier's Prize" to John Ketwig's "And a Hard Rain Fell" both of which are about the same meta-war (Viet-nam) but different micro-wars (though perhaps the better thing to do would be to put "Dear Mom" in for "The Soldier's Prize" and "Going After Cacciato [which I couldn't finish] in it's place; against the Ketwig, so one is comparing experiential fiction to itself, and memoir to itself, each like to like).
Thanks for your well-thought-out posts to both Jayme and pecunium.
Jayme, its hard for me to make many generalizations about war because I have been nowhere near any wars. I think you are right that literature has an amazing capacity to make us consider and comprehend environments and emotions that we would never be exposed to otherwise. But I get the feeling that war is a different creature entirely that no book, movie, documentary, museum can really approximate. Good stories, movies, museums, etc. can get close, I think. For me, the ones that get the closest are the ones that leave a pit in your stomach, that make you feel something instead of just learning something. That's why I like O'Brien's story so much.
And pecunium (if you check back on us), thanks for your thoughtful post and insights. I'll have to look into some of the books you suggested. Its good to get a perspective of someone who has been a little closer to war than any of this blogs usual visitors have. War --and its psycological effects--is incredibly complex. I thank you for adding to our understanding.
It would be rude to just do a drive by posting. What if you had questions?
Museums... I think the only one I've been to which comes close; and that a huge remove, is the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, in Kiev, Ukraine.
But, absent a native guide, or being able to speak Russian/understand Ukrainian, even that is a pale shadow of it.
If you are going to read only one of the books I mentioned, I'd say The Soldier's Story is the best.
If I were going to make a recommendation as to what reading can make war more apprehensible, to the non-experienced (and yes, there is no way one appreciate without being there... it's why the soldier has always had a way of separating the non-experienced from the salted. We still refer, though not across the board, to "seeing the elephant."), it would be Wilfred Owen's "Apologia pro poemate meo."
TK
Just checking in, to see if you've done any follow-up.
I can add anothe museum: The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. There were some places in it which were, appallingly, effective at being affective.
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