Rating: 
Summary: The Essence of the Great War
Review: In 1916 on the Western Front, in a single hour, a well-placed single machine gun could slaughter a thousand men rising up out of the trenches, as they did in wave after wave. Hundreds of books have been written about the Great War, and in recent years, there has been renewed, intense interest in what (in my opinion) remains the most significant event of the 20th century. None of these works is better, and few equal Paul Fussell's 1975 WAR AND MODERN MEMORY. This extraordinary, moving book focuses primarily on the letters, diaries, reports, memoirs and fiction of Englishmen who were in the trenches. Residing in the dusty archives of the Imperial War Museum, much of Fussell's source material had not been seen in more than half a century, and most of it had never been seen by historians. There is little in Fussell's book about the causes of World War I (pick any explanation that appeals to you: you may be right), its battles or its politics. Rather it's mostly about what the people involved, from soldier to office worker, thought and felt about the war - then and later. It's about how these thoughts and feelings were reflected in contemporary poetry and literature, and how they continue to resonate across the decades. And, the book also about irony - the irony of trying to "win" a war which could not be won and resulted only slaughter. The irony of honorable, tradition-enslaved generals who mindlessly continued the slaughter in full knowledge (albeit, rarely first hand) of what was occurring. The irony of officers living among rats and decomposing corpses in the trenches, yet able to arrange for the regular delivery of hampers of delicacies from Fortnum & Mason. The inexplicable irony that although wholly and self-evidently pointless, their was simply no way to stop the killing.
Rating:
Summary: the Why, not so much the What
Review: Keegan does a better job of explaining the "what" of war and his volume on WW I is superb. But ever since I first heard of Pickett's charge, I always wondered what why the soldiers would so willingly march to their deaths. This volume explores that issue through the literature of the period. It is a densely constructed book filled with literary criticism and quotations of long forgotten poetry and fiction. Unless you are familiar with the language of literary criticism written for an academic audience -- you WILL be consulting a dictionary quite often just to grasp the meaning of a paragraph. In fact, the text is more of a literary criticism of the writings from the period than a social or military history. That's not so bad as the literature reviewed owes its all to the war and the nuances of the literature are important. When the book was written, the author was a professor of English and was making his name as a scholar in the field - not a social historian. Nevertheless, it is a superb mid-point in a study of WW-I.
Rating:
Summary: the Why, not so much the What
Review: Keegan does a better job of explaining the "what" of war and his volume on WW I is superb. But ever since I first heard of Pickett's charge, I always wondered what why the soldiers would so willingly march to their deaths. This volume explores that issue through the literature of the period. It is a densely constructed book filled with literary criticism and quotations of long forgotten poetry and fiction. Unless you are familiar with the language of literary criticism written for an academic audience -- you WILL be consulting a dictionary quite often just to grasp the meaning of a paragraph. In fact, the text is more of a literary criticism of the writings from the period than a social or military history. That's not so bad as the literature reviewed owes its all to the war and the nuances of the literature are important. When the book was written, the author was a professor of English and was making his name as a scholar in the field - not a social historian. Nevertheless, it is a superb mid-point in a study of WW-I.
Rating:
Summary: The world and the English language changed after WWI.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: This stands alone.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Simply One of the Finest Critical Books Ever Written
Review: Our American culture currently values works of scholarship and criticism less than a Big Gulp mainly because most scholars in the humanities have ceased talking to the general public and speak only to one another. This book, published in 1976, is perhaps the last example of what it means to be a humanist in the sense that one seeks an understanding of history, of human culture and failing, rather than using scholarship to justify political cant. This gulf between scholars and the general culture is one of the results of the Great War, as Fussell reads the calamity. Fussell examines the breakdown of previous ideas of cultures in the context mainly of English poetry, showing the reader how the unprecedented violence and degradation of trench warfare stripped Western Culture bare, destroying Romanaticism, and allowing moderism to rise in its wake. Fussell examines in depth certain aspects of the experience, for example the chapter titled "Myth, Ritual, and Romance" explores the way soldiers used their cultural understandings to make sense of their experience, or in some ways to control the nearly random destruction affecting them. The discussion on the symbolic value of the number 3 in the Great War is deep and enlightening. Some may disagree with Fussell's interpretation of the experience of the Great War, however, few have written a book of any type that come close to the intense qualities in GW&MM. It's written with a purgative urgency; Fussell as a former infantryman in WWII must present a voice for his brothers. In this way, you may read GW&MM as a testament that far exceeds the cold and programmatic works that now pass as literary criticism. Tobias Wolff and I once discussed this book and he said of it "Once you read The Great War and Modern Memory you feel civilized." I could not agree more.
Rating: 
Summary: The Great War in British Literature
Review: Paul Fussell draws an exceedingly thin line between history and literary criticism in his telling how the Great War will endure modern memory from the British perspective. Fussell analyzes a vast array of poetry, memoirs, and prose-written both during and after the war-to convey the experiences and emotions of British officers and men who took part in such horrible battles as: the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele. Fussell illustrates how the basic elements of literature such as irony, metaphor, and myth appear throughout the literary works of Thomas Hardy, Seigfried Sassoon and Robert Graves to name a few. Fussell is not out to claim that truth is stranger than fiction, however. On the contrary, he argues that fiction closely parallels truth and, it is these literary devises that have ingrained the memory of the Great War into our consciousness. Many believe that the Great War sparked the advent of modernism, and that the lives of a whole generation of youth that came of age during that war was forever changed. Fussell attempts to prove that nowhere is this more apparent than in the British literature published in the years following World War I. Fussell chose primarily British literature for his study. This is not merely an attempt to narrow the focus of his study, but rather an Anglophilic obsession for the British classical literary tradition at the expense of other combatants; the French, Germans, and to a lesser degree, the Americans. Fussell levels a number of harsh criticisms at American writers, particularly Earnest Hemingway, claiming they existed in a literary vacuum "devoid of a Chaucer, a Spencer, a Shakespeare." Fussell points out that, just prior to World War I, England had undergone a literary surge that had transcended existing class structures. Though organized reading groups at Workman's institutes and the Home Reading Union those of modest origins, it was hoped, would rise in class standing. According to Fussell, no effort was spared. Devouring the best the British had to offer, the author contends that the British population as a whole became "not merely literate but vigorously literary." Unfortunately, Fussell fails to mention the inclusion of women in this literary upsurge as well as barely mentioning women writers, if at all. Fussell analyzes and interprets the literature of the Great War with surgical precision. The author gives some fine examples of wartime poetry, especially the works of Seigfried Sassoon and Robert Graves. Fussell plays particular attention to the element of irony, its construction of themes and its influence on future generations of wartime writers. As Fussell points out, "the Great War was more ironic than any other in that its beginnings were more innocent." The British went to war in a gentlemanly and sporting manner even going so far as to kick a football as they advanced towards the enemy trenches. Fussell emphasizes the impact these seemingly insignificant events fuelled by irony have on one's memory, however, fails to present any evidence other than the literature itself. The point is that Fussell's strength lies in literary theory, not history. All too often, the author engages in broad generalizations when he steps out of his area of expertise (literary criticism). Yet this is one of the first works to apply literary criticism to an historical even, thus it enjoys classic status.
Rating:
Summary: an indispensable reference for those interested in modernism
Review: Paul Fussell has created a significant study on the effects of World War I on the human consciousness and attitudes. This book is an especially useful tool for students of modern literature, as Fussell cites many instances in which the impact of the war was and, in some cases still is, reflected in the literature. Fussell's arguments include one explaining the modern distrust of language, especially abstract nouns. Central to this argument is Hemingway's famous quotation from A FAREWELL TO ARMS in which he states, "abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments, and the dates." Fussell explores the War's myriad of adverse effects and skillfully reports his conclusions on their effects on the modern state of being in this study which is an indispensable tool for those interested in modern studies.
Rating: 
Summary: Readable -- and meaningful -- literary criticism
Review: Paul Fussell, critic, memoirist, and sometime gadfly, produced in this book something rare: a work of contemporary literary criticism that's not only readable and comprehensible, but significant. Fussell's thesis: The First World War -- the Great War, the War to End All Wars -- forever altered European and American consciousness, bringing major change to language, literature, other aspects of cultural memory. The massive, horrifying conflict laid waste to 19th-century innocence and incubated the irony and cynicism that has pervaded 20th-century letters, politics, and popular opinion. Before the war, men could and did believe in gallantry, in battle as sport, and in idealized patriotism. After the British lost 400,000 dead in only four months at the Somme (known to the common soldier, Fussell notes, as "The Great Fuckup") irony became the dominant literary mode. You cannot understand this book if you do not understand "irony" in its earlier sense, before it was rendered all but meaningless by overuse and misuse as a synonym for "coincidence." This is irony in the sense of the grave disjunction between expectations and reality. Fussell read widely and with acute attentiveness for this book. His sources are not only the poems and memoirs of writers like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sasson and Robert Fitzgerald, but newspapers, advertisements, military forms, and battlefield rumors and myths. For evidence of the decimation of the British army, he cites the lowering of the height standard for recruits in 1916; the army no longer had the luxury of accepting only tall volunteers. Throughout, Fussell's prose is cogent and well argued. And he writes, thank God, in plain English, without the tiresome jargon and woozy thinking of postmodern academic critics.
Rating:
Summary: A book that causes one to comprehend what went before.
Review: The book is a significant contribution to the history of literature and provides seminal insights into the cultural history of the west as formed by its writers and poets.
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