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You are here: Home / Absent Friends / RIP / Paul Fussell, RIP

Paul Fussell, RIP

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Paul Fussell died yesterday. Wartime is the best book I’ve read on World War II, and Doing Battle is a painfully honest account of being a soldier. Here’s how the latter starts:

Late in the afternoon of March 15, 1945, in a small woods in southeastern France, Boy Fussell, aged twenty, was ill treated by members of the German Wehrmacht. His attackers have never been identified and brought to justice. How a young person so innocent was damaged this way and what happened as a result is the subject of this book.

There’s a lot of this kind of understated irony, and a whole lot of anger, in that book. If you haven’t read his stuff, you’re missing out.

(h/t Librarian in the comments)

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  2. 2.

    earl_of_scruggs

    I’m sad to hear this. He was an underrated writer, scabrous, ironic, compelling. He was gadfly of the kind we so sorely need, and, on the topic of WWII, his memoirs are a bracing antidote to the Tom Brokaw/Greatest Generation claptrap.

  3. 3.

    Mike Goetz

    Seconded. Fussell was one of the greats. “The Great War and Modern Memory” is one of the key books of the 20th century.

  4. 4.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OK, I’m inspired. The three book mentioned are on my “to do” list now.

  5. 5.

    Librarian

    I read Great War and Modern Memory in college. It was one of those books that change your whole way of thinking.

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    Thanks for noting Fussell’s passing. He was indeed a challenging writer.

    There is a very good profile of him at the Guardian. I’ve seen some comments elsewhere that try to paint him as pure anti-Left. As usual, ideologically driven morons do not do justice to a complex human being.

  9. 9.

    The Fat Kate Middleton

    @Librarian: Same here. And what Mike G. said. I was stunned by this book. That was thirty years ago – time to read it again.

  10. 10.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Brachiator:

    There is a very good profile of him at the Guardian. I’ve seen some comments elsewhere that try to paint him as pure anti-Left. As usual, ideologically driven morons do not do justice to a complex human being.

    From reading the biographical notes I suspect Mr Fussell’s opinion about the “America, Fuck Ya” crowd wouldn’t be printable.

  12. 12.

    Raven

    The Real War, Paul Fussel

    They knew that in its representation to the laity, what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied.

  13. 13.

    FlipYrWhig

    I audited a class with him in the early 1990s. I don’t think I appreciated as much as I ought to have, in retrospect.

  14. 14.

    Ronnie P

    The poet Philip Larkin wrote a famous negative review of The Great War, but at the end he says something to the effect of “but then again, he [Fussell] served, and I did not.”

  15. 15.

    RSA

    I mostly enjoyed his collections of curmudgeonly essays: Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays, BAD — Or, The Dumbing of America, and Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear. I didn’t always agree with him, but his popular pieces were always fun to read.

  16. 16.

    HumboldtBlue

    I love you guys. I’ve been looking for new material, I just finished re-reading Goodbye Darkness by Manchester, a book I haven’t read since I was a freshman in college and I was tiring of my civil War collection.

    This adds some new flavor to my shelves, although I am loathe to buy from Amazon I may have to after researching Fussell.

  17. 17.

    EconWatcher

    Back in the day, when I was studying in Ann Arbor, I went to the late, great original Border’s bookshop (the bohemian one, before it became a soulless corporation). I said I’d like a good book explaining poetic meter, because I was trying to understand what Shakespeare was doing. An aging, intellectual hippie referred me instantly to Fussell’s “Poetic Form and Poetic Meter.”

    Awesome. Very fun read; really informative. If you have any interest in how poetry works, pick up a copy.

    RIP, Mr. Fussell.

  20. 20.

    Davis X. Machina

    Fussell’s definition of, and disquisition on, chickenshit, in Wartime is all by itself reason to read the book.

  21. 21.

    Rachel in Portland

    In addition to his great cultural commentary, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form is the best book I have read on that topic. One of my favorite writers.

  22. 22.

    Uncle Cosmo

    I recall his recollection of his reaction (& that of the soldiers around him in Europe), waiting to be transferred to the Pacific theater for the invasion of Japan, to word of the dropping of the first atom bomb:

    It meant we were going to live.

    Now it may in fact have been the USSR’s entry into the war that was primarily responsible for the Japanese surrender–but it is hard indeed to dispute Lt. Fussell’s recollection or to deny the sincerity of that emotional response.

  23. 23.

    erlking

    @earl_of_scruggs: Couldn’t agree more. His acerbic wit and experience are powerful antidotes to the sepia-toned and nostalgic bullshit that infects so much writing about the war.

  27. 27.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Also, see his book “Class,” about social class markers in American society. Hilarious.

  28. 28.

    LanceThruster

    @Douglass Truth: At a tribute dinner for Gen. Paul Tibbets and the Enola Gay crew at the Proud Bird in LA, I gave Tibbets a copy of the essay, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb” which he said he had never seen or read. What prompted that was a History Channel piece on the Enola Gay crew that stated that some of Tibbets’ descendents thought he was some sort of monster.

    Fussell’s writing was powerful and compelling reading. I am fortunate to have read many of his works. He will be missed.

  29. 29.

    aimai

    The Great War in Modern Memory, as someone said upthread, is one of the greatest books ever written about war, poetry, memory and a specific moment in time. Wartime was also very good. But to really understand Fussell you have to read his wife Betty’s book “My Kitchen Wars” (Ma Batterie De Cuisine) which is her memoir of her lengthy marriage to a guy who was a brilliant, unhappy, closeted, gay man. It makes reading his other books all the more poignant because you see how fundamentally dishonest he was forced to be about his inner life even while he was writing (often, in the case of the GWIMM) about other gay men and their inner lives.

    aimai

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    Now it may in fact have been the USSR’s entry into the war that was primarily responsible for the Japanese surrender

    I don’t know, this seems like a bit of historical revisionism. Japan’s military urged the emperor to keep fighting even after the first bomb was dropped.

    Note that I am not arguing here for the “wisdom” of dropping the bomb. But although Japan was clearly defeated by the latter months of 1945, I don’t get any idea that the nation was going to surrender without further bloody fighting. And the Soviet invasion of Germany was brutal; an invasion of Japan promised more of this brutality.

    @HumboldtBlue:

    This adds some new flavor to my shelves, although I am loathe to buy from Amazon I may have to after researching Fussell.

    amazon has also recently had some great deals on kindle nonfiction books, including some good books on the Civil War (e.g. a collection of essays by McPherson).

  31. 31.

    aimai

    @HumboldtBlue:
    Just wanted to say high HumboldtBlue, I haven’t seen you around the intertubes recently. If you do read The Great War in Mod etc… read it with a period copy of the Oxford Book of Poetry–specifically the edition that came out before WWI. Last time I read the book I went to my local BrynMawr Booksale and found an old, out of date, edition and it was invaluable since I could quickly find the relevant poems and their setting in the edition that (he argues) many of the great poets of that period were reading in the trenches.

    aimai

  33. 33.

    Barry

    @EconWatcher: “Back in the day, when I was studying in Ann Arbor, I went to the late, great original Border’s bookshop (the bohemian one, before it became a soulless corporation). I said I’d like a good book explaining poetic meter, because I was trying to understand what Shakespeare was doing. An aging, intellectual hippie referred me instantly to Fussell’s “Poetic Form and Poetic Meter.””

    Back in the day, Borders was known for this – if you applied for a job, they ask questions like ‘if the customer asks for X, what other books and authors would you recommend?’.

  34. 34.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @earl_of_scruggs:

    He was an underrated writer, scabrous, ironic, compelling.

    I have disagreements with some of his earlier 18th-c scholarly work — which was my first encounter with him, and the field I researched — but that’s mainly because the field has moved on in terms of its historical understanding since the 1960s, when he was actively contributing to it. (His work on prosody doesn’t date.)

    There are ironies about how, as an American writer, he provided that application of literary criticism to history in The Great War and Modern Memory, when it’s a war to which Americans (for obvious reasons) don’t have the same kind of broad cultural connection as Europeans. Definitely the antithesis of Brokaw’s pablum.

  35. 35.

    tejanarusa

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    My late father-in-law, a sailor on board ship in the Pacific, was waiting to be sent to the invasion of Japan. His reaction: exactly the same.

  36. 36.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @aimai:

    I could quickly find the relevant poems and their setting in the edition that (he argues) many of the great poets of that period were reading in the trenches.

    I’ve seen Wilfred Owen’s personal library on display: lots of small hardback india-paper OUP volumes. But the 1900 Oxford Book of English Verse, compiled by Q — one of the first anthologies, really, reflecting the birth of ‘English literature’ as an academic field — was definitely the one that went across the Empire and into the trenches.

  40. 40.

    Joseph P.

    I was just watching Ken Burn’s “The War” the other day. I remember being impressed at the comments made by Paul Fussel. I did not previously know who he was, but I now want to read his books. He sounds like he was a sensitive and introspective man, and I am sure he will be missed by those that knew him.

  41. 41.

    EconWatcher

    @pseudonymous in nc:

    Fussell became pen pals with Eugene Sledge, whose account of life as a grunt in the Pacific war was used for the HBO series, The Pacific. Sledge and Fussell were kindred spirits, and both of them told it like it was, with no false sentimentality.

    For the same reason people here are recommending Fussell’s war books, I’d recommend Sledge’s With the Old Breed. Don’t be put off by the title or the pulpy appearance of the book. It is one of the most harrowing accounts of war you will ever read.

  43. 43.

    LanceThruster

    @EconWatcher: Was glad to have read “With the Old Breed” before seeing “The Pacific.”

    It’s an important reminder of how first hand accounts strip combat of its “glamor” by bringing you face to face with the sheer brutality, particularly in regards to the island campaigns.

  44. 44.

    EconWatcher

    @LanceThruster:

    I’d never heard of Peleliu before reading that book. Since then, I’ve read that it’s widely thought to be the nastiest fight of the war involving U.S. troops. (Nothing, of course, could hold a candle to Stalingrad.)

  47. 47.

    tybee

    @Raven:

    wow. thanks. i’ll spend some time on that site.

    for those interested in wwii, the best single volume treatment of that conflict is “Delivered from Evil” by Robert Leckie. i believe he wrote another book or two as well. :)

  48. 48.

    Anoniminous

    A writer who should be on everybody’s “The Most Influential Writers of the 20th Century” list. Alas he was too ornery and iconoclastic to be taken-up by Teh Masses and their Gate Keepers.

  50. 50.

    HumboldtBlue

    Oh, and Antony Beevor’s “Stalingrad” is a fantastic work. I have always struggled with keeping a mental map in my head when reading military history and for some reason (along with some maps I copied from online) I never had much of a problem with Beevor. It doesn’t hurt to have played hours of “Blitzkrieg” and I have been remiss in not picking up more of Beevor’s work (his follow-up to Stalingrad was IMO pretty meh).

    Also, while we’re on the subject, An Army at Dawn and Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson are fantastic.

    Hey, Aimai, just been lurking. Losing Strange seriously dampened my commenting urges.

  52. 52.

    lawrence

    i’ll never forget the day that Saving Private Ryan was released. Morning Edition did an interview with Steven Ambrose who fawned all over the opening and Paul Fussell followed up denouncing the opening for the blood porn that it was. iirc, the interviewer wasn’t prepared for such “straight talk”.

  53. 53.

    Svensker

    @aimai: .

    But to really understand Fussell you have to read his wife Betty’s book “My Kitchen Wars” (Ma Batterie De Cuisine) which is her memoir of her lengthy marriage to a guy who was a brilliant, unhappy, closeted, gay man.

    Yes. And Betty Fussell’s books about food and food history are gems in their own right. An intelligent, interesting woman.

  54. 54.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    Back in the early ’00s (’03 or ’04) I loaned my copy of Fussell’s The Boys’ Crusade to a young wingnut coworker who ha recently been getting into WWII history. Here’s the conversation we had when he returned the book:

    Young Wingnut: This book sucks!

    Me: Really? How so?

    YW: It makes war look bad.

  55. 55.

    Raven

    @lawrence: Wonder what he thought of the Thin Red Line adaptation? It was a shame that it came out at the same time, it was overshadowed by PVT Ryan.

  56. 56.

    EconWatcher

    @lawrence:

    I’m not sure I get that. For someone like me who has never seen war, I thought the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan was an education in what bullets really are, and what they can really do to a human body. It stuck with me, and made me understand some things better.

    If Fussell was all about removing the romance from war, I could see why he might have issues with the rest of the movie, but not the first half hour.

  58. 58.

    HumboldtBlue

    If Fussell was all about removing the romance from war, I could see why he might have issues with the rest of the movie, but not the first half hour.

    I agree, I’m not sure why he would object to showing combat in its most vicious and deadly form. They didn’t glorify that landing, they showed us the horror of what men endured.

  62. 62.

    Bill Arnold

    @Quaker in a Basement:
    Re “Class”, one part that really resonated with me was the categorization into
    lower lower class
    middle lower
    upper lower
    lower middle
    middle middle
    upper middle
    lower upper
    middle upper
    upper upper.
    I don’t recall him discussing lower upper upper, middle upper upper, upper upper upper, etc. American inequality has a lot of orders of magnitude.

  64. 64.

    tybee

    @Raven:

    wilmington. 5 min from tybee. i’ll wave that way this weekend as i’ll be on tybee & little tybee a bit – unless “Beryl” rains/blows us out.

  66. 66.

    pseudonymous in nc

    My grandad was on Sword Beach, then went across northern France through to the Netherlands, often alongside the Canadians. He didn’t tell too many stories, but the ones he did tell were bleakly comic. He kept diaries and sent letters that my uncle now keeps; I ought to look at them.

    @FlipYrWhig: I’m been on what you might call a decade-long sabbatical, but my heart’s with the 18th c.

  67. 67.

    smintheus

    If you enjoyed The Great War in Modern Memory, you’d probably also appreciate the memoir by Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That. It covers similar ground, but as an eye-witness and if anything more sardonically.

  68. 68.

    mellowjohn

    @tejanarusa: my father was serving on an LCI (landing craft infantry) with the 7th fleet, and in august 1945 they were moored in leyte gulf in the phillipines.
    instead of invading japan, he came home in february 1946. i was born in november.
    thank god for the atom bomb has always had special meaning for me.

  69. 69.

    smintheus

    @lawrence: Steven Ambrose was a drunken fool. I spent an evening with him about 20 years ago, when he came to my campus to give a high profile guest lecture. He was a bore and clownish. His lecture went over like a lead balloon with both faculty and students; had nothing consequential to say.

  72. 72.

    LanceThruster

    @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): It’s amazing how many personal veterans accounts start with buying into the John Wayne depiction of war and combat. It is usually the actual combat veterans who learn that the reality is far more severe and disturbing.

    Along those lines, I recently saw a docudrama on the Red Baron and did not realize that towards the end of the war before his death he spoke out against the wasting of young lives for no good purpose. He resented and resisted being used as a recruiting tool.

    Never let it be said though, that the 101st Fighting Keyboardists would ever allow themselves to be swayed by facts.

  73. 73.

    mainmati

    My Mother-in-Law is a good friend of Betty Fussell, ex-wife of Paul and I’ve traveled with her myself. A beautiful, warm and gracious person and a great writer in her own right. Her book Corn is an excellent read. My wife says, when she was growing up, everyone liked his books but that not many liked him personally since he was uniformly, harshly critical about everyone and everything. Maybe WWII really damaged him.

  74. 74.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @LanceThruster:

    I have a great-uncle who was in, iirc, the 1st (Army) Division, on the front lines from the Torch landings through the end of the war (luckily he didn’t have to go into Normandy until D+10). The only thing he ever talked about was escaping from a POW camp in North Africa, which he says happened because the Italians running it were so inept.

    When I was 10 or 11, I asked my grandma (his older sister) why Uncle Ownie never talked about the war, and she let me know in no uncertain terms that war isn’t at all like the movies. I took that to heart. The world needs more Uncle Ownies and his sisters to make this plain.

  79. 79.

    tybee

    i like this line from the “thank god for the atom bomb”:

    Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present.

  80. 80.

    sherparick

    @Librarian: I must admit as someone who never went to war himself (a luck of generational timing, to young for Vietnam, to old for the Gulf War and all the fun since), Fussell introduced me to far more than military history to what a constant “fuck-up” war is. It is a long piece of literary criticism, and hence not necessarily anyone’s Cup of Tea, but “The Great War and Modern Memory” is one of the great non-fiction books of the 20th century. http://books.google.com/books?id=1_vXso80qrAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
    He justified his survival, and he memorialized his two comrades who died on top of the pill box on the German-French border near Sarreguemes, France in March 1945. Lieutenant Biedrzycki, who was killed along with TSGT Hudson atop that pill box, is burried in the American Military Cemetery of the Lorraine at St. Avold.

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