Review of Stephen E. Ambrose's _The Good Fight_

[jbor]

I guess the point is that it's an insightful review which betrays an 
historical understanding quite close to Pynchon's. Schwarz's criticisms of
Ambrose's "pious interpretation of America's role in World War II" are right
on the money. Like A.J.P. Taylor, Schwarz acknowledges the role that
opportunism and contingency play in historical events:

    _The Good Fight_ is littered with lofty cant. To say, for instance, that
    the purpose of Operation Overlord (the Normandy invasion) "was to free
    France from Nazi tyranny" is to transform history writing (albeit "for
    kids") into rhetoric. That statement places the accents on all the wrong
    syllables. Overlord's goal was to establish a literal and figurative
    beachhead in Western Europe in order to help destroy German military
    power and hence end the war. To characterize it as Ambrose does is to
    confuse incidental results with fundamental purpose.

http://www3.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/06/schwarz.htm

The tragedy of it is that, as Schwarz predicts, Ambrose's distortions and
flag-waving "will mold another American generation's understanding of the
war".

By the way, the (new) argument Doug has come up with, the one which says
that because A.J.P. Taylor's interpretations are used by Holocaust-deniers
they must be wrong, is totally illogical. He's squirmed away from his
original insinuation, i.e. that A.J.P. Taylor, and anyone who dares to cite
A.J.P. Taylor, are Holocaust-deniers.

Happily, the _Atlantic_ article (a very *good* article) on A.J.P. notes how

    [f]or forty-plus years undergraduates around the world taking
    twentieth-century-history classes have found it hard to avoid grappling
    with the "Taylor thesis" -- that is, his argument that World War II in
    Europe was caused not so much by a megalomaniacal Adolf Hitler as by the
    misguided policies of Britain and France.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/04/kennedy.htm

And a good thing that is, too. I'd say that Pynchon had certainly read
Taylor's _Origins_ in the early 60s, and that the historical representation
of WWII in _GR_ was strongly influenced by it.

The _Atlantic_ seems like a really good journal.

best

----------
>From: Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: RE: Review of Stephen E. Ambrose's _The Good Fight_
>Date: Sat, May 26, 2001, 9:04 AM
>

> So what's your point?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jbor [mailto:jbor at bigpond.com]
> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 3:29 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Review of Stephen E. Ambrose's _The Good Fight_