Fussell, Paul. Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford University Press, 1975.
Reason read: even though I am reading about the Spanish Civil War and you would think one war would be enough, I am also reading Great War and Modern Memory in honor of April 6th 1917 as the day the United States entered World War I. I should also add that I am reading WRA: a story of human conservation about the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II and Birds Without Wings which also has scenes of war. Even Power Without Glory has an element of war. It seems I am thoroughly saturated with war stories this month. The lice in pant seams has come up more than a few times.
It is amazing how hand in hand war and literature has always been. If veterans were not writing about the experiences of war, soldiers at the front didn’t want to die until they learned what happened next in chapter of their favorite novels. It is as if literary and historical documents bravely hold hands against the barrage of bullets in the midst of chaos and carnage. Life imitated art and art mirrored life in the literature.
One of the most interesting facts of Great War and Modern Memory is the inclusion of the soldier’s Field Service Post Card, a form of communication which dehumanized and automated communication with a code of what could and could not be said to loved ones back home. I appreciated the small facts that otherwise seemed out of place.
Author fact: Fussell was a professor of English Literature at Rutgers University.
Book trivia: Great War and Modern Memory was dedicated to an infantry sergeant who was killed next to Fussell in France in 1945. Some events stay with you for the rest of your life.
Music: “Sprinkle Me with Kisses if You Want My Love to Grow,” “Tipperary,” “Colonel Bogey March,” “When It’s Apple Blossom Time in Normandy,” and “I Want to Go Home.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251).
~*LunaSea*~ 