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 enlarge | Author: Paul Fussell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy Used: $8.40
You Save: $11.59 (58%)
New (31) Used (62) from $8.40
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 6219
Media: Paperback
Edition: 25 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 2.7
ISBN: 0195133323
Dewey Decimal Number: 820.9358
EAN: 9780195133325
ASIN: 0195133323
Publication Date: March 2, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Inventory subject to prior sale. Used items have varying degrees of wear, highlighting, etc. and may not include supplements such as infotrac or other web access codes. Expedited orders cannot be sent to PO Box. Sorry, not able to ship to APO, FPO, Alaska, and Hawaii.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Clearly one of the best books written on WWI January 18, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This classic by Paul Fussell should be required reading on most college campuses. His prose is impeccable. I have read every Fussell book I can get my hands on. He is one of the best.
a fascinating study of selective memory: June 22, 2006
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is really a rather profound book. Superficially labelled a 'literary criticism' it is more an analysis of the way in which people remember traumatic experience.
In this instance we are dealing with men-at-war--World War One, predominantly (with an occasional study of its influence on World War II participants' subsequent memories) and the ways in which a tremendous number of authors broke away from the traditional self-mythologizing so many previous wars' histories tended to evoke. It was here that people started to speak in public critically of the decisions of their superiors, both in the military and in government. This book attempts to record the ways in which aggrandizement was altered, made into individually heroic scenes of defiance or love instead of an increasingly tired defense of God and Kingdom.
What is really being explored is the ways in which the modern world has changed from a generally considered 'glorious past' into a disillusioned report from the trenches. This idea transcends war and imposes itself upon everyday life. This is an important notion to consider seriously as the present glooms on.
A very important book disguised as something not many people would think about reading.
A Note on the 25th Anniversary Hardback Edition (Oxford) May 16, 2006
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
A review of the book production, not the contents.
I would not recommend the 25th Anniversary Hardback Edition, simply on account of poor production values:
1. It has a perfect, not a stitched binding, so it doesn't open out flat but snaps back together like a theatre seat.
2. The type is actually difficult to read because the ink used is shiny and the typeface is not crisp. It looks to me like the wrong ink and paper were used - they don't work together.
I have given 5 stars so as not to interfere with the rating of the book itself, which is of course superb; but I would give this particular edition a miss.
 Great War Literature Comes Together April 22, 2005
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
Picking up this book I was a little naive in my thinking. I assumed that it would be an easy read, a comparative study on the effect of Great War Authors and Writings had on Modern Literature. Yet, this book was a continuous struggle, not for its dullness but by the vast amount of information that the author is able to throw at the reader. The author is without a doubt an expert on this time periods literature, his ability to find comparisons with the Modern world for me was astounding. The highest praise perhaps is that this is the kind of book that I would want to write but never could. This book is not for the lighthearted, it is better to have a knowledge of literature that has come out of the Great War but is not required. This is a book with a heart and soul, shining light on generation that is fading into the past.
The Great War in British Literature January 14, 2005
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
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.
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