Sunday, January 28, 2007
From Here To Eternity
I've read the first book of the post-World War Two novel FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, by James Jones. The entire novel is about 700 pages. The first book is about 85 pages. I enjoyed the first book thoroughly, but I'm a slow reader, so it took me about three weeks. (I usually read for about an hour before bed. I'll read a NEW YORKER article, look at a review saved from the TIMES and then a bit of a chapter from a novel. I read in bed, often falling asleep resting on my elbow, my hand holding up my head. I'll be in the middle of a paragraph. I'll wake up, try to keep reading, fall asleep again, and then, when my hand hurts from holding my head up and my elbow hurts from keeping my hand in such a position as to allow the holding up of my head, I wake up again and shut off the lamp. So my progress reading FROM HERE TO ETERNITY was tortoise-like.)
I've returned the book to the library, because it was due and because I want to take a break from it. I want to finish it. I very rarely want to finish a book. This one is very good. I had forgotten that great literature doesn't have to treat the rest of literature as if it were a sampler from which to draw. You don't have to have read any other writers to get James Jones's exact meaning. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is the story of an army man. This epic ends with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Very few war novels end with the beginning of the war being described. But Jones pulls the effect off. (How do I know this if I have only read 85 pages? I know my writers, that's how.)
Just before reading the first book of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY I was going to read Norman Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is considered the best novel about Americans in World War Two. It is, apparently, one of the most realistic accounts of war ever written. But I opted for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY instead, even though James Jones has been dead since the seventies and Norman Mailer is someone to whom I could send a letter. Even though one of the greatest American novelists is still alive, I have read something by his dead contemporary. I always wanted to read INVISIBLE MAN before Ralph Ellison died, but I didn't, and when I read it I realized I'd have loved to have contacted him. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is a novel I can grasp. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is, from what my father told me, a harrowing book about masculine brutality. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is about a professional soldier navigating the military bureacracy and trying to maintain his self-respect. It is not about a climber and it's not about a self-destructive fool. It's about a man who needs the military. He's stationed in Hawaii, he's got his girl and he wants to be the bugler but cannot because the compromises he must make are intolerable to him. And at the end of the novel, he, above all the other soldiers of any rank, is the one who's ready, because he lives, breathes and tastes army life. He doesn't want to run a business, be a lawyer or own property. He loves the three square meals a day the army gives him, even if the food is bad. He'll stick with the army even if it keeps him from what he considers his calling. He'll stick with the army even if it wants him to box, which he does well but hates. He has accidently blinded a man boxing and he tries to resist boxing afterward. The army gives him degrading duties because he won't yield to it's request that he box. But he knows an army doesn't exist for games. All the other soldiers are distracted by plans for civilian life, desire for athletic achievement or badges of honor. But the soldier in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY knows his life will be anonymous and hard and he can live with it.
I've returned the book to the library, because it was due and because I want to take a break from it. I want to finish it. I very rarely want to finish a book. This one is very good. I had forgotten that great literature doesn't have to treat the rest of literature as if it were a sampler from which to draw. You don't have to have read any other writers to get James Jones's exact meaning. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is the story of an army man. This epic ends with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Very few war novels end with the beginning of the war being described. But Jones pulls the effect off. (How do I know this if I have only read 85 pages? I know my writers, that's how.)
Just before reading the first book of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY I was going to read Norman Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is considered the best novel about Americans in World War Two. It is, apparently, one of the most realistic accounts of war ever written. But I opted for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY instead, even though James Jones has been dead since the seventies and Norman Mailer is someone to whom I could send a letter. Even though one of the greatest American novelists is still alive, I have read something by his dead contemporary. I always wanted to read INVISIBLE MAN before Ralph Ellison died, but I didn't, and when I read it I realized I'd have loved to have contacted him. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is a novel I can grasp. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is, from what my father told me, a harrowing book about masculine brutality. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is about a professional soldier navigating the military bureacracy and trying to maintain his self-respect. It is not about a climber and it's not about a self-destructive fool. It's about a man who needs the military. He's stationed in Hawaii, he's got his girl and he wants to be the bugler but cannot because the compromises he must make are intolerable to him. And at the end of the novel, he, above all the other soldiers of any rank, is the one who's ready, because he lives, breathes and tastes army life. He doesn't want to run a business, be a lawyer or own property. He loves the three square meals a day the army gives him, even if the food is bad. He'll stick with the army even if it keeps him from what he considers his calling. He'll stick with the army even if it wants him to box, which he does well but hates. He has accidently blinded a man boxing and he tries to resist boxing afterward. The army gives him degrading duties because he won't yield to it's request that he box. But he knows an army doesn't exist for games. All the other soldiers are distracted by plans for civilian life, desire for athletic achievement or badges of honor. But the soldier in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY knows his life will be anonymous and hard and he can live with it.
# posted by Fredwemyss @ 10:26 AM 
