The Great War And Modern Memory

[paul guthrie]

From time to time we discuss books, usually soldiers accounts. This is just a superb book displaying an awesome knowledge of many fields. Even though Paul Fussell is American, its primary focus is on the UK.

[Simon_Fielding]

A major book. As a PhD candidate and A level English teacher, I can say it's one of the finest works of literary criticism I've ever read. He's a bit harsh on David Jones though! Perhaps showing its age (early 1970s) a little, but aren't we all!

His work on WW2 'Wartime' isn't as strong, but still worthwhile. I seem to remember that Fussell served with the 101st Airborne in WW2...

Simon

[paul guthrie]

I do not have it with me but the book is dedicated to a man who was shot right beside him in France in 1945. It's superb in his ability to relate Great War events and saying to different genres and I never feel it's a stretch.

Also some pretty funny things like troops on the march, see some others and collectively " ******!"..l. a few more steps, " the Worcesters".

[paul guthrie]

Well the censor got me but I think most of you can guess, starts with a b, ends with r! Think I got too cocky when in an earlier post got by with crude term for expelling gas!

[paul guthrie]

I have finished re-reading this marvelous book of criticism. One of many interesting areas explored is influence of Great War and GW poetry on subsequent poetry.

Michael Longley wrote a poem " Wounds" in 1972 about the burial in Northern Ireland of three British Soldiers and a bus conductor. It's fantastic.

First the Ulster Division at the Somme

Going over the top with " **** the Pope!"

" No surrender!" a boy about to die,

Screaming " Give 'em one for the Shankhill!"

"Wilder than Gurkhas" were my father's words

Of admiration and bewilderment

Next comes the London Scottish padre

Resettling kilts with his swagger-stick,

With a stylish backhand and a prayer,

Over a landscape of dead buttocks

My father followed him for fifty years.

At last, a belated casualty,

He said - lead traces flaring till they hurt-

" I an dying for King and Country, slowly."

I touched his hand, his thin head I touched.

Now... I bury beside him

Three teenage soldiers, bellies full of

Bullets and Irish beer, their flies undone...

Also a bus-conductors uniform-

He collapsed beside his carpet -slippers

Without a murmur, shot through the head

By a shivering boy who wandered in

Before they could turn the televison down

Or tidy away the supper dishes.

To the children, to a bewildered wife

I think " Sorry Missus" was what he said.

Wow.

[Simon_Fielding]

It's good isn't it?

I'm doing a PhD thesis on Northern Ireland poets at the minute - and I find the Great War appears a good deal.

Michael Longley's most recent collection 'The Weather in Japan' continues his engagement with his father's war memories, as well as some very moving pieces on the cemeteries.

Longley's father served witht he London Regt and won the MC - I have the citation somewhere and I'll look it up.

Longley's autobiographical piece 'Tuppenny Stung for a Penny Bung' provides a little more detail - including his father's nightmare of a bayonet attack on a trench where he 'chased a tubby German who turned round an burst into tears'.

The most recent book on the topic is Fran Brearton's 'The Great War in Irish Poetry' which has just come out in paperback.

I could go on all day!!

Regards

Simon