One There Was a War
John Steinbeck's Once There Was a War, a collection of his war reporting from World War II, was a very happy discovery. Many months ago a student came into the Creativity Center with a copy of Steinbeck's The Log of the Sea of Cortez, which I had vaguely heard of, and the student said I really ought to read it. I have a copy of his Arthurian novel that's been on my shelf for decades, unread, but it occurred to me that I've never read his non-fiction. So, it was off to the store.
There on the shelf near Sea of Cortez, was this book. Never heard of it. Pulled it out to look at it, and decided I'd better buy it too.
Good decision. As part of my "Warfare for Writers" project, I've actually gotten to it, first. Wow. I have to say, wow. I've been reading bits from this to people for weeks, and I've selected a piece from it for next year's Passage Party.
He had about an 800-word slot to fill, so this book consists of 800-word set pieces, unless the censor shortened them. He's a novelist, so he catches the smells, the sounds, the perverse refusal to give in to being shelled (he describes a resident of Dover deploring a shelling of the town from France and its effect on his rose bush. "The Bosch was bloody bad last night. Broke the yellow one proper. And it was just coming on to bloom."), the superstitions, and the waiting. He tells us about the American airmen planting gardens, in order to get decent unboiled-to-paste vegetables. He gives an unexpected, but powerful, view of Bob Hope. He describes the women working the antiaircraft battery along the coast, and wonders how they'll go back to civilian life after that.
He sneaks some rarely-discussed truths about men in war right past the censors.
Many of the pieces are really prose poems.
Here's a bit of description, discussing what a war correspondent would have seen at the Salerno landings:
"He would have smelled the sharp cordite in the air and the hot reek of blood if the going has been rough. The burning odor of dust will be in his nose and the stench of men and animals killed yesterday and the day before. Then a whole building is blown up and an earthy, sour smell comes from its walls. He will smell his own sweat and the accumulated sweat of an army. When his throat is dry he will drink the warm water from his canteen, which tastes of disinfectant.
While the correspondent is writing for you of advances and retreats, his skin will be raw from the woolen clothes he has not taken off for three days, and his feet will be hot and dirty and swollen from not having taken off his shoes for days. He will itch from last night’s mosquito bites and from today’s sand-fly bites. Perhaps he will have a little sand-fly fever, so that his head pulses and a red rim comes into his vision. His head may ache from the heat and his eyes burn with the dust. The knee that was sprained when he leaped ashore will grow stiff and painful, but it is no wound and cannot be treated."
CBsIP: The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Bramah
Claims for Poetry, Donald Hall, ed.
My Àntonia, Willa Cather
Best American Essays 2010, Christopher Hitchens, ed.
The Successful Novelist, David Morrell
Ravage, Jan Beatty
There on the shelf near Sea of Cortez, was this book. Never heard of it. Pulled it out to look at it, and decided I'd better buy it too.
Good decision. As part of my "Warfare for Writers" project, I've actually gotten to it, first. Wow. I have to say, wow. I've been reading bits from this to people for weeks, and I've selected a piece from it for next year's Passage Party.
He had about an 800-word slot to fill, so this book consists of 800-word set pieces, unless the censor shortened them. He's a novelist, so he catches the smells, the sounds, the perverse refusal to give in to being shelled (he describes a resident of Dover deploring a shelling of the town from France and its effect on his rose bush. "The Bosch was bloody bad last night. Broke the yellow one proper. And it was just coming on to bloom."), the superstitions, and the waiting. He tells us about the American airmen planting gardens, in order to get decent unboiled-to-paste vegetables. He gives an unexpected, but powerful, view of Bob Hope. He describes the women working the antiaircraft battery along the coast, and wonders how they'll go back to civilian life after that.
He sneaks some rarely-discussed truths about men in war right past the censors.
Many of the pieces are really prose poems.
Here's a bit of description, discussing what a war correspondent would have seen at the Salerno landings:
"He would have smelled the sharp cordite in the air and the hot reek of blood if the going has been rough. The burning odor of dust will be in his nose and the stench of men and animals killed yesterday and the day before. Then a whole building is blown up and an earthy, sour smell comes from its walls. He will smell his own sweat and the accumulated sweat of an army. When his throat is dry he will drink the warm water from his canteen, which tastes of disinfectant.
While the correspondent is writing for you of advances and retreats, his skin will be raw from the woolen clothes he has not taken off for three days, and his feet will be hot and dirty and swollen from not having taken off his shoes for days. He will itch from last night’s mosquito bites and from today’s sand-fly bites. Perhaps he will have a little sand-fly fever, so that his head pulses and a red rim comes into his vision. His head may ache from the heat and his eyes burn with the dust. The knee that was sprained when he leaped ashore will grow stiff and painful, but it is no wound and cannot be treated."
CBsIP: The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Bramah
Claims for Poetry, Donald Hall, ed.
My Àntonia, Willa Cather
Best American Essays 2010, Christopher Hitchens, ed.
The Successful Novelist, David Morrell
Ravage, Jan Beatty