![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dog_eared_chroniclesWith the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge
This is a book that I have a distinct memory of purchasing, even if my memory of why I decided to buy it is a little fuzzy. I suspect it had something to do with virulently anti-war historian Paul Fussell writing the intro; I'd used him as a source in some papers I'd written for class that year.
I know it was my freshman year of college (so, late 90s) and I know I bought it at Borders in downtown Towson outside Baltimore. The reason I remember it so clearly is that the cashier, who strongly resembled the dad of one of my closest friends, was noticeably struck by the fact that I was buying this particular book. I know it because he mentioned it. I'm not sure whether it was because teenaged girls are probably not the primary consumers of nonfiction WWII memoirs or what. But I was pleased I made an impression.
The cashier mentioned that this book is one of the great memoirs of its kind. I haven't read a plethora of books in this genre -- maybe 4 others or so -- so I'm not a good judge of that. But I can tell you that this book is one of the most vivid, upsetting books I've ever read. Like the EP book I wrote about yesterday, I've returned to this one -- but never because it's a joyful diversion. And what's remarkable is that, in spite of that, it has one of the most humble, compassionate narrators I know of in Sledge. I think that's part of it's power; Sledge is such a decent human-being that it's that much harder to watch him struggle mentally, physically, & emotionally with the evil and brutal acts demanded of him and his fellow soldiers. If Sledge is so affected, what would similar circumstances due to me?
What I remember most vividly about this book isn't the carnage, although there is a lot of that, but the gut-churning descriptions of Sledge's fear. And living in squalor and, ugh, the mud. The passages about boredom interspersed with piercing moments of absolute terror as the whine of shell approaches -- it gives me shivers now, 20 years later, to remember.
This is an extraordinarily powerful book, I feel like I understand more about people because I've read it. The best I've read at convincing me that war may have noble ends, but never noble means. Sledge is absolutely excellent at describing how such a fight for survival, on both sides, changes him and reveals to him just how complicated and deep human brutality is. Phew.
Sledge died, I believe, in the early 2000s -- before this book was made into The Pacific on HBO, I think. Which was... let's just say, uneven. I like parts, I really didn't like other parts -- but because of this book, I did wish they'd focused only on Sledge and his memoir, though I know that would have been an incredibly slog for a viewer at time.
Next: Everything: A Book about the Manic Street Preachers by Simon Price
Reading: The Magicians by Lev Grossman
This is a book that I have a distinct memory of purchasing, even if my memory of why I decided to buy it is a little fuzzy. I suspect it had something to do with virulently anti-war historian Paul Fussell writing the intro; I'd used him as a source in some papers I'd written for class that year.
I know it was my freshman year of college (so, late 90s) and I know I bought it at Borders in downtown Towson outside Baltimore. The reason I remember it so clearly is that the cashier, who strongly resembled the dad of one of my closest friends, was noticeably struck by the fact that I was buying this particular book. I know it because he mentioned it. I'm not sure whether it was because teenaged girls are probably not the primary consumers of nonfiction WWII memoirs or what. But I was pleased I made an impression.
The cashier mentioned that this book is one of the great memoirs of its kind. I haven't read a plethora of books in this genre -- maybe 4 others or so -- so I'm not a good judge of that. But I can tell you that this book is one of the most vivid, upsetting books I've ever read. Like the EP book I wrote about yesterday, I've returned to this one -- but never because it's a joyful diversion. And what's remarkable is that, in spite of that, it has one of the most humble, compassionate narrators I know of in Sledge. I think that's part of it's power; Sledge is such a decent human-being that it's that much harder to watch him struggle mentally, physically, & emotionally with the evil and brutal acts demanded of him and his fellow soldiers. If Sledge is so affected, what would similar circumstances due to me?
What I remember most vividly about this book isn't the carnage, although there is a lot of that, but the gut-churning descriptions of Sledge's fear. And living in squalor and, ugh, the mud. The passages about boredom interspersed with piercing moments of absolute terror as the whine of shell approaches -- it gives me shivers now, 20 years later, to remember.
This is an extraordinarily powerful book, I feel like I understand more about people because I've read it. The best I've read at convincing me that war may have noble ends, but never noble means. Sledge is absolutely excellent at describing how such a fight for survival, on both sides, changes him and reveals to him just how complicated and deep human brutality is. Phew.
Sledge died, I believe, in the early 2000s -- before this book was made into The Pacific on HBO, I think. Which was... let's just say, uneven. I like parts, I really didn't like other parts -- but because of this book, I did wish they'd focused only on Sledge and his memoir, though I know that would have been an incredibly slog for a viewer at time.
Next: Everything: A Book about the Manic Street Preachers by Simon Price
Reading: The Magicians by Lev Grossman
