Paul Fussell & TRP

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

>
Christopher T's post ends:


>Finally, my ideas about Pudding's _E. Coli_-assisted suicide: by 
>deliberately ceasing to take the antibiotics Pointsman prescribes,
>Pudding really dies in battle, as he did not in the Great War and
>could not in the sequel.  Katje helps him relive Passchendaele and the 
>Brigadier takes advantage of this reliving to die like a soldier, not 
>like a doddering old has-been vet.


This is persuasive.  Good observation, IMO.  
Regarding Fussell, I think his stuff on war is really informative.  A provocative 
essay, title to a collection, is: Thank God for the Atom Bomb.  Here he argues the 
question of the A-bomb's use from the perspective of an infantryman (him) 
stationed in the Pacific waiting for the order to invade Japan.  Fussell is really 
valuable, I think, because he's essentially liberal or progressive, but not doctrinaire, 
esp. w/ respect to war which, as you point out, he has experienced first hand.  He 
also has a really fine essay in the August 1989 issue of the Atlantic, title: The Real 
War 1939-45, where he argues that our historical sense of WW2 has been Disnified 
out of recognition. Censorship, literal or--voluntary, is one of his main themes. 
He's also written a really good book on prosody, POETIC METER AND POETIC 
FORM, though perhaps someone has already mentioned this.

john m