Kilroy was here
Dec. 12th, 2005 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amari_zI'm finally finished reading Paul Fussell's Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War.
It was not quite what I was expecting, but it was very good. I think I was anticipating something more based on psychology/history, but Fussell focuses more on literary sources (really, I shouldn't have been surprised, he's a professor of English, after all). He certainly focuses on literature and language much more than he did in The Boys' Crusade.
The book could provoke reams of discussion, but I'll just note two things (one of which is utterly frivolous).
Fussell writes:
Now, the silly. In his discussion on wartime "fresh idiom," Fussell gives various examples from the British RAF. One of these examples goes thus:
I have Fussell's book on the First World War, but I think I may need a break. I'll probably start Lynne Truss's Talk to the Hand next. I know she annoys some people, but she amuses me. And with a subtitle like: "The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door" how can it go too wrong?
It was not quite what I was expecting, but it was very good. I think I was anticipating something more based on psychology/history, but Fussell focuses more on literary sources (really, I shouldn't have been surprised, he's a professor of English, after all). He certainly focuses on literature and language much more than he did in The Boys' Crusade.
The book could provoke reams of discussion, but I'll just note two things (one of which is utterly frivolous).
Fussell writes:
The Great War brought forth the stark, depressing Journey's End; the Second, as John Ellis notes, the tuneful South Pacific. The real war was tragic and ironic, beyond the power of any literary or philosophic analysis to suggest, but in unbombed America especially, the meaning of the war seemed inaccessible. As experience, thus, the suffering was wasted. The same tricks of publicity and advertising might have succeeded in sweetening the actualities of Vietnam if television and vigorous uncensored moral journalism hadn’t been brought to bear. America has not yet understood what the Second World War was like and has thus been unable to use such understanding to re-interpret and re-define the national reality to arrive at something like public maturity.(268) This struck me in particular. In this day, where we seem to have little "vigorous uncensored moral journalism" and television news has become merely another instrument of "publicity and advertising" we have slipped backwards, or perhaps, not so much gone backwards as reached new heights of immaturity, where we seem satisfied to be shown the world as a comic book in which we are unquestionably the good guys and the realities of the war we are waging are not discussed or shown.
Now, the silly. In his discussion on wartime "fresh idiom," Fussell gives various examples from the British RAF. One of these examples goes thus:
Originally a term for any impressive or particularly destructive mission, a prang was said to be a wizard prang if especially memorable. Or wizard could be used, as in the nursery for anything wonderful: "How was your date?" "Wizard!"(256) So if you, like me, have rolled your eyes or grit your teeth each time a certain child actor uttered "wizard!" you can perhaps distract yourself by wondering if George Lucas was cognizant of the history of the phrase or if it was just a happy coincidence.
I have Fussell's book on the First World War, but I think I may need a break. I'll probably start Lynne Truss's Talk to the Hand next. I know she annoys some people, but she amuses me. And with a subtitle like: "The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door" how can it go too wrong?
