|
Post by wild on Apr 1, 2012 16:36:08 GMT -6
Dan Try " Blackadder firing squad part 1" on youtube.It's hilarious. Richard .
|
|
|
Post by fred on Apr 2, 2012 5:16:01 GMT -6
Someone recently convinced me to read a few of the "older" books about the LBH. I guess up until that time, the only "classic" I had read was Graham's The Custer Myth.
So I called Dick Upton and ordered an old, used copy of Charles Kuhlman's book, Legend into History... looks to have been owned by at least two other people; then ordered Dick's newer re-print of Fred Dustin's, The Custer Tragedy. (I'm partial to guys named "Fred" and "Charles.")
Dustin did most of his writing in the mid- to late-thirties, while Kuhlman's work came out in the early fifties. I read the Kuhlman book first, and was considerably more impressed with the earlier parts than with the Custer battle, per se, which seemed to me to be all over the place, way too contrived, and much, much too complicated for a military event. There was considerable value in the book, however, especially the work done prior to the Custer fighting. Beware of the prose, however, if you decide to take this one on... it is rather old-style academic and it becomes rather ponderous and tedious.
Dustin's work-- a decade or more older-- is already more interesting to me, though the way Dick published it-- double columns, old-style, early typewriter typeface-- seems to make the book awfully long... of course, I am a very slow, absorb-tive reader, so I've only finished about 40 pages, or thereabouts.
So far, there has only been background information, but it is so-well done and so interesting that I am almost afraid of it ending and the actual June 25th work beginning. He gives a great synopsis of the various Indian tribes, the Seventh, and most importantly, the Grant Administration and George Custer's personality... and believe me, he pulls no punches. He reminds me so much of Dark Cloud... without the beautiful writing style.
Anyone interested in what George Custer must have been like as a person, really needs to read this. Maybe if the idiots like the Swiss Missus, the Rinis of the world, and even old Clair Conzelman read this book, they wouldn't think so highly of the Boy General. Personality traits, of course, do not necessarily manifest themselves in military operations, but one can see why Custer acted the way he did-- just ask "Montrose" what he thinks of Custer's actions of the 25th-- and I have a little less sympathy-- and empathy-- for him than I did before reading what I have. Jim Donovan brings some of this out in A Terrible Glory, but one wonders if Jim was too enamored of the man-- and too critical of Reno and Benteen-- to stress Custer's personality the way he probably should have.
So... if any of you have the interest and have not already read these two books, I would certainly recommend them. It will be interesting to see if I feel the same way about Dustin as I felt about Kuhlman: great beginnings, tapering off as things progress. Of course, one must always remember, these men did not have the instant and therefore organizational access in those eras as we have today. They also did not have the archaeology and artifactual findings we have.
Best wishes, Fred.
|
|
|
Post by wild on Apr 2, 2012 9:09:15 GMT -6
He reminds me so much of Dark Cloud... without the beautiful writing style.
;D ;D ;D
|
|
|
Post by markland on Apr 2, 2012 9:44:53 GMT -6
Dan Try " Blackadder firing squad part 1" on youtube.It's hilarious. Richard . If anyone in the US is a member of Amazon Prime, they can stream Blackadder I & II & Goes Forth free as part of their membership. Billy
|
|
|
Post by markland on Apr 3, 2012 17:27:05 GMT -6
"High Flight"
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace. Where never lark, or even[8] eagle flew — And, while with silent lifting mind I have trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, - Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
|
|
|
Post by El Crab on Apr 4, 2012 1:21:36 GMT -6
DC et al:
I started The Great War and Modern Memory and got about 40 pages in, but picked up a different book. On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. It's been a long time coming, reading that one. Part of the reason I decided to read it is a thought I have in my brain about combat when hope is lost, and I'm hoping this book will give me a little more insight on such things.
But you'll be happy to know I just picked up a book that ties in rather well with Fussell's book: The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets & Playwrights by Tim Cross. When I first spotted it at the bookstore I frequent (I book-scout and get trade credit nearly daily), I looked in the index for some of the same names mentioned in TGWAMM. When I didn't see any of the names, I realized the title says it all. All of the writings in the book are from individuals killed in World War I. Looks to be an interesting book.
|
|
|
Post by clw on Apr 4, 2012 15:02:03 GMT -6
This is a hard book. Fussell is simply over my head some of the time. But I'm not sorry to be making the effort. It's taking me in new directions.
You ask dc, (I think) how the LBH effected our culture through literature. Problem is, there doesn't seem to be much literature. What little there is has no depth. I read a couple today that you would most likely rip to shreds and label drivel. One wasn't bad.
Custer died when almost every one in the country bore the horrors of the Civil War. They weren't naive about such things as blood and death. I would think that at least some of the eulogies would reflect that but they don't. The country was simply stunned. I keep looking for that reasoning in the literature of the times, but it's not there. Of course if it wasn't for Elizabeth, it would have been smaller. Maybe we should take the sucess of her books into consideration here.
I found this today written in the late '60's. I liked it.
General Custer Versus the Titanic Richard Brautigan
For the soldiers of the seventh Calvary who were killed at the Little Bighorn River and the passengers who were lost on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. God bless their souls.
Yes! it’s true all my visions have come home to roost at last. They are all true now and stand around me like a bouquet of lost ships and doomed generals. I gently put them away in a beautiful and disappearing vase.
|
|
|
Post by benteen on Apr 4, 2012 15:40:49 GMT -6
clw,
Most poems go over my head, but this fellow must have some imagination. Where is the correlation between 210 soldiers being slaughtered on a Montana hillside, and a ship hitting an iceberg and sinking, other than people died.
Be Well Dan
|
|
|
Post by zekesgirl on Apr 5, 2012 11:15:35 GMT -6
Dan, the Titanic was unsinkable in the minds of the world at that time, much like Custer (and the 7th) was unbeatable.
|
|
|
Post by clw on Apr 5, 2012 11:26:16 GMT -6
Exactly and I think the beautiful and disappearing vase is the glory and greatness perceived before the fall.
I am so out of my depth analyzing poetry. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
|
|
|
Post by benteen on Apr 5, 2012 16:39:57 GMT -6
OK Ladies, it still is a bit of a stretch, but at least it makes a little more sense now. Thank you
Be Well Dan
|
|
|
Post by Dark Cloud on Apr 5, 2012 18:44:59 GMT -6
I'm sorry if I oversold the Fussell book and nobody's enjoying it. But I would like to clear up one possible misconception, which is probably my fault.
"You ask dc, (I think) how the LBH effected our culture through literature." Not really. Better said would be how the culture of any time affects how brains stow memory, how it is packed and labeled in the mental boxes for storage.
By that, I also mean how methods of memory were constricted and thereby narrowed the options of journalism and literature and art before the quill met the ink and the brush met the paint. Those limitations defined how the event was to be remembered.
If you've never seen war dead in the field, and you know your audience hasn't either or wouldn't want to recall, what tools do you reach for? Detailed, accurate, and graphic medical autopsies or Tennyson and Shakespeare? After The Great War, you might read of soldiers tripping over their own entrails while running in novels and letters and well beyond the private reports of the military.
If you tripped during an attack with tanks a good many soldiers were flattened to grotesque distortion by sequential armor moving up and spreading them about soft clay as cartoons show. They weren't going to avoid you and stop and be a target. Yet another fun new experience of the war to end them all. Imagine trying to describe that for the first time, watching tank after tank roll over the corpse till you could roll it up. Literally. The corpse of a friend, or a soldier who served under you whose parents were to get a letter you're going to write.
What Fussell deals with are the tools of memory, which up to the Great War was literature as opposed to recorded music, say, or radio, television or movies which did not exist for the public in 1914. This is why he was impressed with how Thomas Hardy had even before the war erupted found a method and tone that would work and was needed for the new mood, and did, even though he was talking about something else, and far more trivial, entirely.
And things stayed popular for a long time, and crept into everyday correspondence with no need for the writers to reference them: everyone understood the concepts and could quote lines from tales of Arthur and Roland, Pilgrim's Progress, and The Well at World's Ending as well as the Bible and Shakespeare. So, all the poetic and prose formats were long established.
Utilized to discuss the Great War, these tools sounded as if the author was making fun of the horror, with sing-song rhymes and childish glory issues and topics of no relevance and soon of no interest to the public, especially soldiers. So, he tries to show how authors, primarily poets, tried to adjust the language and rhetoric to accurately reflect what the hell it was like. Some made it, some didn't.
But he pointed out all the cliches and templates we have from Hemingway and Elliott and all of them after the war would not have been remotely understood before, and further how the need for new and fresh idiom to remember and record hitherto unimaginable horrors in scale and device forced the changes.
Although forty years previous, the world wasn't a whole lot different in 1876 than in 1914, and the same mental constructs of what was 'truth' and 'glory' and duty were still pretty much as the doughboys found them. How people trying to fluff up what good news could be garnered - Calhoun's heroic fight, etc., the supposed Last Stand itself - utilized existing templates I found entirely in concordance with Fussell's thesis. The existing language was entirely suited for this small, sad event, but it contorts without effort (or much intent) truth and history. These things need to be recognized and acknowledged for what they are. Greater Truths are, unfortunately, only marginally true and greater only in the sense that someone can be called great, which would not be the opinion if the truth - mundane, harsh, often embarrassing truth - were known.
I found it amazing the number of essentially brand new, actual words the Great War provided us and how many of them are still used. That doesn't include the slang, which is even more impressive in number and variants. Virtually none of them were in use before the war and after they're cliches in only four years, and entirely useful in everyday life. That's evidence of a real, cultural shock as surely as the outlines of a Cambrain meteor crater, on and in our language.
I'm of the opinion too many readers of Custerland try to meld participants' words with our world, but the old words and phrases conjure up things in the modern mind that are inaccurate. What they amongst themselves understood to be social codes for polite lies and avoidance of lines of investigation (like mutilations, the burials, any signs of fiasco) are utterly lost on too many today. Myself included, but for the point.
In fairness to Fussell, who can come across as a know it all, he said in another book that this was one of his favorite poems, and he cannot read it without weeping. Know the feeling. By Herrick:
HERE a pretty baby lies Sung asleep with lullabies: Pray be silent and not stir Th' easy earth that covers her.
|
|
|
Post by benteen on Apr 6, 2012 15:22:20 GMT -6
I certainly have no disagreement with poems bringing home the realities of war, but I think pictures brought it home even more. Mathew Brady and others with the pictures from the Civil War, Antietam, Sunken Road, etc, I believe made more of an impression on the populace than poems did.
Be Well Dan
|
|
|
Post by Dark Cloud on Apr 6, 2012 17:25:55 GMT -6
The issue wasn't what brought the war home more, photos or poetry. Neither did, really, the former because of censors, poetry by delay of publication. And it sounds ludicrous now, because poetry plays near no role in life and has been supplanted by lots of song lyrics. But till 1918, poetry was relatively huge. Fussell focused on poetry as just one aspect of how the Great War is remembered by the people who fought it because some soldiers were great poets and writers. The US wasn't in it very long at all and didn't have the same traditions as England.
I can't shake the feeling I've failed to accurately convey the thesis, that as Rumsfeld said you go to war with the army you have, and extend it to you record it with the idiomatic rhetoric in your language that exists. Not with the Army or the language that's needed. Over the four years, England - as illustrated by its poets - reconfigured the language to the need. It's easier to see in the poetry than the prose, which for the most part didn't come till years after, partly because of censorship.
It's not just the vocabulary that has to emerge, it's the tone and mood that has to be recreated, because these battles were of months in duration and not the quick three day or less affairs of our Civil War. And they went 24/7 for months.
And now, we've had all this experience shared through the writings of soldiers and are used to the modern vernaculars and idioms and at sea with the older ones. And that's what I think is an issue with reading accounts contemporary to LBH or at least pre Great War, which was the point of change.
Sorry, I've bored and confused and annoyed everyone without being able to accurately explain what I'm excited about and why I think it very important. Very frustrating, but the horse is dead. We tried.
|
|
|
Post by clw on Apr 6, 2012 18:25:41 GMT -6
I DO get it. My mother had scrap books full of poems she clipped and pasted as a young girl and that was in the 1920's. Poems were published in all the periodicals of the time and everyday people read them and were moved by them.
Languages and literature evolve with cultures. To those of us who read history, this should be obvious. But often it's not. I couldn't agree with you more here...
But I see it more often in the way thoughts are expressed, the way things are depicted, the conclusions that are drawn. They don't fit with the thought processes of the 21st century and they get misinterpreted. One of the reasons I get the most from those who are writing in the time I'm investigating is that it hasn't been filtered, but you have to read a LOT of the period stuff to pick up the style and the thinking. Reading Fussell has underscored this for me.
Bradley's papers are all online now and I'm reading them. It takes a while to get to know him; his turn of the phrase, his use of words that are archaic, his moral tags. But I truly believe that if we don't expose ourselves to the period writings and learn the way of them and how they differ from modern efforts in thought and assessment, we'll never grasp the issues accurately.
|
|