Paul Fussell (1924–2012)

I had almost forgotten that back in 1980 people still wrote books like this - flamboyant prose style and page long slabs of personal opinion in between actual literary criticism. The book is quite entertaining though, and at its best makes the interesting point that 'going South' to the beaches and parasols of the Med, to shed clothes and have affairs and worship the sun, was for the British between the wars a kind of pastoral idyll, replacing the pastoral idylls of bleating flocks on English sward and babbling brooks beneath venerable elms (from an earlier time when the British didn't travel as much). Unlike much literary criticism these days Paul Fussell is actually grateful and appreciative of good quality travel writing, and literature in general, and expresses his enthusiasms in this book (he also complains about modern tourism in an understandable but somewhat ploddingly predictable manner). The book is worth reading as an entertaining survey of some of the best travel writing ever written.… (mer)

Started out as a funny field guide to the American class system. Written in 1983 it’s astonishingly up-to-date, although of course a few things have changed. But it’s really wild how much is still exactly the same. Anyway, it started out funny but as it went on it just started seeming nastier and repetitive. If you can find it, you may enjoy the first few chapters, but you may as well bail out halfway through.

ADDED: Well this is just plain weird, the day after I review this obscure 37 year old book, it gets mentioned in a NYTimes opinion piece (great essay BTW): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/opinion/television-culture.html?referringSour...… (mer)

Paul Fussell's THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY (1975) is not a book one can hurry though. I spent about a month on it, taking frequent breaks, because there's just so much to absorb, to learn, from this amazing volume of research, scholarship, and heartfelt commentary. Fussell came away from his own war, WWII, deeply and permanently scarred, and spent the better part of his professional life trying to understand the horror of war and the personal damage it can cause, but he was also deeply intrigued by the countless literary works that came from its participants and victims, evidenced here. He looks at not just works from the Great War, but other more recent wars too, up through Vietnam, and makes some very thoughtful and credible comparisons. Enough said; read this book. I enjoyed a brief correspondence with Paul before his death in 2012, and was deeply saddened when he left us. I will be thinking about this book, and his personal memoir, DOING BATTLE, for a long time. RIP, Paul.

- Tim Bazzett author of the memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA… (mer)