In his interesting recent book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges meditates on the ways in which the experience of war conditions and distorts the national self-consciousness of the nations involved....
On the other side of the fold, I had some thoughts about the place of literature in relation to the myths of war, and I wanted to hear back from any and all about what suggestions you might have for readings about war - whether that war is experienced at the battle front or the home front.
For Hedges, the grim actuality of war is quickly buried beneath a sediment of nationalist myth, a thick layer of bellicose cultural meaning and narrative whose object is that of legitimizing and glorifying the violence that is the essence of war. The lure of war has its source in the stable and comforting meanings they produce in modern societies, in the clear sense of value and purpose they confer on a world where such clarity seems ever more elusive. If it is sleep that knits the ravelled sleeve of care, then for nations and peoples it is a slumber of myth, and a sleep whose dreams are those of war and violence.
But even if we admit that a simplified and aggressive national mythos tends to become pervasive in societies at war, it is also clear that this process is neither as hegemonic nor as inevitable as it may at first seem. When clashes on the battlefield come to an end, a new struggle begins, a struggle to make sense of the violence, the sacrifice and the suffering of the conflict. The meaning of war, in other words, is never completely determined and is never spoken by one dominant voice. There are always other voices for whom the experience of war, personally or culturally, has been too searing to be left to "terribles simplificateurs" and demagogues. Such voices have insisted that we think about war in ways more complex than the simple and comfortable platitudes served up by our national myth makers. For them, the memory of those who suffered in the past, and the fate of those who will suffer in the future, requires more than car decals and a few choruses from someone like Lee Greenwood.
As we've been struggling these days with our own terrible simplifiers, as we've seen the humanity of those who fought the Second World War disappear beneath the bronzed mythos of the "Greatest Generation", I thought it might be good to go back and think about the some of the more challenging works about the experience of war. So I guess my question to you is: what would you include in a reading list of important works about the nature and or experience of war? I have some ideas of my own, and I'll pick off some of the low hanging fruit, but I'd love to hear from any of you if you have your own lists and thoughts.
Also, since limiting this to literature seems a bit arbitrary, if you have any films, monographs, etc. that deserve attention then tell me about these too.
My first stab, in no particular order....
The Iliad - Homer
It all begins here. Enough said
Lysistrata - Aristophanes
Henry V - The Bard
Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Walt Whitman
Excellent example of secondary influence of war, writing as one who intimately witnessed the suffering caused on the battlefields of the Civil War
Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Own, et al
The First World War produced, as Paul Fussel showed so well, a sea change in English poetry, and the works of these two are among the best. Mention also should go to Robert Graves.
All Quite on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
You read it in school. Read it again.
Company K - William March
Compelling narrative of an American infantry company in WWI France, told from multiple perspectives of various members. A really stunning book.
Storm of Steel - Ernst Juenger
Juenger's meditations are both brilliant and disturbing. Perhaps the best example of a positive take on war. Essential also for understanding the meaning of war for a generation of Germans who returned from the war to a society that seemed to have lost all meaning.
Three Soldiers - John Dos Passos
Put down Hemingway, and pick up Dos Passos
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - Eugene Sledge
Lauded by Paul Fussel and John Keegan, Sledge's relatively overlooked memoir of the Pacific War is a welcome antidote to the neat simplifications of the "Greatest Generation" mythos.
The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Dispatches - Michael Herr
In Pharaoh's Army - Tobias Wolff
A Rumor of War - Philip Caputo
Jarhead - Anthony Swofford
It might be too early to place this book on this list, but it is well worth reading and may take its place here in time.
You'll notice, from the American perspective, that the Korean War isn't represented. If anybody has works to recommend in this era, I'd love to hear about them. (And no, IMHO, I don't think we can count MASH)
I could go on and on and on, including also film and other works, but I'd really like to hear what suggestions you have!