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Title: Good-Bye to All That : An Autobiography by Paul Fussell, Robert Graves ISBN: 0-385-09330-6 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 February, 1958 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.55 (29 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Moving report on the end of an era
Comment: I spotted this remarkable book on ... Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the Century list. In "Good-bye to All That, " the British poet Robert Graves (1895-1985), best known to American readers as the author of the novel of ancient Rome, "I Claudius," writes the autobiography of his youth, justifiably famous for its eloquent but straight-forward depiction of the horrors of WWI, during which Graves spent years in the trenches of France as an army captain.
More than the war, however, Graves' topic is the passing of an era: the class-ridden and naïve culture of the Edwardian upper classes, a culture did not survive the war. Graves came from a landed family and received a classic boarding-school education. Even in the trenches officers like Graves had personal servants and took offense when they had to dine with officers of 'the wrong sort' (promoted from the lower classes).
Graves' narrative itself barely survives the end of the war; the post-war chapters seem listless and shell-shocked, emotionally detached. The battles he survived are written about with precision, gravity, and emotional impact; but Graves' marriage and the birth of his children seem like newspaper reports. Surprisingly, he doesn't even talk of his poetry much. This, surely, is not a defect of the book but a genuine reflection of his feelings at the time: After the War, nothing meant much to him.
Graves' literary style is very matter-of-fact--the opposite of the imagistic, adjective-driven language one might expect of a poet. Instead, he had a gift for the right details: in only a sentence or two, by careful description, he can perfectly describe a fellow-soldier or give the exact sense of 'being there' in battle. The book is a remarkable achievement worth reading even for those who may be glad the old days were left behind.
Rating: 5
Summary: Brutally honest war memoir
Comment: Robert Graves, poet and author of "I, Claudius", was also an infantry officer in the Great War. Here he has written a war memoir which ranks in the same league as Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia".
Honest and open to a fault, he chronicles his upbringing in the English public schools system and his dislike of hypocrisy. This antagonism he will carry with him throughout his period in the trenches.
Graves' vivid portrayal of life in the trenches is second to none. He recounts the endless routine of trench life with its boredom and the terror of attack and German shelling. Held up to special scorn is the sheer stupidity of the higher command and its insistence on wasting the lives of officers and men.
Graves successful attempt at convincing a military board to go easy on his friend and writer Siegfried Sassoon is an amazing segment in itself (Sassoon wrote a pacifist tract while at the same time leading his infantry company with- by all accounts- great courage).
His description of the effects of life in the trenches is well written. Neurosthania (shell-shock) was the 19th century term before post-traumatic disorder was coined. The portrayal of it is vivid, not in a clinical way, but in the way Graves writes about himself and his comrades as they adjust to civilian life.
Everything before Graves life seems a prologue to the war, and everything after an epilogue. What an great and important book this is.
Rating: 5
Summary: Masterful and Ironic Caricatures of Human Folly
Comment: "Good-Bye to All That" is one of the most imminently readable autobiographies I have yet come across. Generally, I do not particularly care for the autobiographical genre of writing, nor, based on my public school and university history textbooks, would I have professed much interest in history. Graves' book, however, changes "all that." Two aspects of the book have endeared it to me:
First, Graves' writing style is replete with droll, dry wit. His use of irony to paint word pictures in his readers' minds is masterful. His use of language is inspiring to every occasional writer who longs for such skill. His ability to see through the façades of academic reputation in both public school and university, of nationalistic patriotism, of formally organized religion, and of military tradition overcomes popular perception to show the ignorant, delusional, self-serving nature of such things. Never are his unveilings heavy-handed, though. On the contrary, Graves depicts events and presents examples in descriptions that he refers to as "caricatures," but it would be a dull reader indeed who fails to perceive the ironies implicit in these entertaining recitations.
Second, Graves' autobiography is revealing of many historical topics that escape adequate coverage in most textbooks. The reader comes away with a much improved understanding of early 20th century British society, education, and culture. Because most of the book deals with Graves' experiences in the trench warfare of World War I, the reader comes to visualize the barbarity and insanity of war more acutely than he may have hitherto done. Then there are tidbits that generally escape the formal history textbooks altogether-the antipathy between British troops and French citizenry that led some Britons to the conclusion that their country had aligned itself with the wrong side in the war; the imprisonment of British residents of German ancestry resulting from war paranoia (foreshadowing America's treatment of its citizens of Japanese ancestry during the next world war); British soldiers' opinion of American "support" as American artillery shells showed themselves frequently to be duds or, worse, to fall short and explode in the British trenches rather than the German. Graves presents us history as he saw it first hand, and we are spell bound by his power as a storyteller.
The book also has, from my perspective, two significant weaknesses. First, my command of American English did not always stand me in good stead when confronted by some words and phrases of peculiarly colloquial British usage. This edition of the book does include a short "Glossary for non-British readers," but it needs to be about twice as long for some of us. The second weakness, more of a disappointment, really, is that the narrative stops when Graves is only thirty-three. Even though Graves later appended a brief epilogue, the reader wishes that he had continued his story for many more years, for we come to feel a friendship for this man and are enjoying sitting at his knee, listening to him recount his insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking observations on life-and we do not want the story to end.
"Good-Bye to All That" is well worth the reading to any number of people-aspiring writers (note Graves' style), lovers of poetry (understand the life behind the poetry), and students of history (learn from it or repeat it eternally). In fact, I cannot conceive of any literate person who would not find Graves' autobiographical tale both enjoyable and instructive.
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Title: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell ISBN: 0195133323 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon ISBN: 1931313814 Publisher: Simon Publications Pub. Date: August, 2001 List Price(USD): $35.95 |
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Title: The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry by Jon Silkin ISBN: 0141180099 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925 (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Vera Brittain ISBN: 0140188444 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Rites of Spring : The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins ISBN: 0395937582 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 14 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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