If Sledge is telling us the story of the PTO, Leckie is performing an act of translation.
Huh. Interesting. I see what you mean, and I can understand the attraction, but I like "With the Old Breed" better for exactly the reason that you don't care for it as much. I don't want the experience translated for me. Just tell me what happened, and I'll translate it myself.
"Helmet for My Pillow" was really interesting, but "With the Old Breed" made me weep, which I'm learning is part of my process of internalization
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They just told me what happened, and let it go at that, and as much as I enjoy playing with words I have always liked that kind of story-telling. It's not that I don't like narrative storytelling. Just not with this, I suppose. I grew up steeped in military history--it was central to my family, to the way our extended family worked and the spaces where people had gone missing. And my grandparents told those direct, no-nonsense stories about farming, and the railroad, and the War, and what it brought. My dad deliberately raised my brother and me with narratives about the ETO and how it was different from the PTO, with how the different campaigns made a difference in how they were fought, in what was considered the right choice to make. WWII and the Civil War were our childhood context
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Chaucer-folks spend much of Leckie's book annoyed that he doesn't just get to the fucking point, and that the reader can't figure out when and where half the stuff happens. And Beowulf-folks spend a substantial portion of Sledge's book frustrated that he lists things out, like a table of atrocities, without giving the emotional context for a lot of them.
*g* I'm JUST SAYING. There is a pattern to this response! (And now I suddenly want con-buttons with "Team Chaucer" and "Team Beowulf" on them. It would be HILARIOUS, and also TRUE.)
I had a whole list of quotes--some of them will show up if I make a complete post one the series has aired, because I have a startling number of things to say about this show, and these sources, and why they're important. But basically the book is full of these moments, these painful, echoing descriptions, and every single one of them is something I want to pull out and make other people read. This is the stuff that made me a history major, and military history in particular, and I get confused when people say that history is boring, because how can it be? THIS is history. It's not boring, it's the most complicated, fucked-up, bewildering, exciting thing there is. *g*
Say, could I hit you up for a book rec? I'm looking for a couple of sources to get me into the head of an American Marine serving in Vietnam during the war. Anything pop into your mind?
Huh. Most of them are crap, in part because they're trying to draw from WWII memoirs and it just doesn't work. Try these, though?
Masters of the Art, Ronald Winter (helicopter pilot, but he's got a way with dispassionate observation that gets at the feeling of compartmentalization really well) Lullabies for Lieutenants, Cox (not one of my favorites, but other people say they get a lot out of it; it's more like Sledge's book than Leckie's) Vietnam-Perkasie, Ehrhart (this is one I would unequivocally recommend; it's another memoir that I return to repeatedly and get more from each time. YMMV, because I'm routinely drawn to poets writing of combat, and Ehrhart is another of those. He also wrote a couple of sequels, but I'm not familiar with those) A Rumor of War, Caputo (this is maybe too obvious, the way that The Things They Carried is, but that doesn't make it any less striking or true
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Huh. Interesting. I see what you mean, and I can understand the attraction, but I like "With the Old Breed" better for exactly the reason that you don't care for it as much. I don't want the experience translated for me. Just tell me what happened, and I'll translate it myself.
"Helmet for My Pillow" was really interesting, but "With the Old Breed" made me weep, which I'm learning is part of my process of internalization ( ... )
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*cracks up* Hello.
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Masters of the Art, Ronald Winter (helicopter pilot, but he's got a way with dispassionate observation that gets at the feeling of compartmentalization really well)
Lullabies for Lieutenants, Cox (not one of my favorites, but other people say they get a lot out of it; it's more like Sledge's book than Leckie's)
Vietnam-Perkasie, Ehrhart (this is one I would unequivocally recommend; it's another memoir that I return to repeatedly and get more from each time. YMMV, because I'm routinely drawn to poets writing of combat, and Ehrhart is another of those. He also wrote a couple of sequels, but I'm not familiar with those)
A Rumor of War, Caputo (this is maybe too obvious, the way that The Things They Carried is, but that doesn't make it any less striking or true ( ... )
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