Study War No More

British 55th (West Lancashire) Division troops blinded by tear gas  during the Battle of Estaires, 10 April 1918

The First World War by John Keegan
New York : Vintage Books, 2000.
xvi, 475 p. : ill., maps ; 21 cm.

I've been slogging through a lot of books of European history and especially WWI - The Proud Tower, The Sleepwalkers, and now Keegan's First World War, which I pointedly finished on Memorial Day.

World War One is truly emblematic of the sickening, meaningless, barbarous, and utterly worthless human phenomena of making war - particularly modern warfare.  Especially painful is the fact that WWI essentially lay the groundwork for WWII.  As Keegan states in the closing pages of his book, "The Second World War was the continuation of the First...."

When I finished this book, I was left numbed by the staggering numbers of young men killed in the WWI.  This passage toward the end of Keegan's work gives a sense of the monstrous carnage that WWI unleashed.

"To the million dead of the British Empire and the 1,700,000 French dead, we must add 1,500,000 soldiers of the Hapsburg Empire who did not return, two million Germans, 460,000 Italians, 1,700,000 Russians, and many hundreds of thousands of Turks...."

In what moral universe can a person truly reckon with or comprehend such massive slaughter?  And then to realize that these numbers will be increased by a factor of six or seven (including many more civilians) in the horrors of WWII leaves me feeling despair.

I will say that Keegan has managed to pull together a readable and lucid account of WWI which is no small accomplishment.  He also manages to tell the story with moral conviction, but a light ideological touch, so that the reader is allowed to form her own opinions about where the guilt and responsibility lies for the nightmare that WWI was. I would definitely recommend it to a student who is interested in a detailed but compact history of the "Great War."

a poet 'swonder full i fe!

Self Portrait by e.e. cummings 

at the National Portrait Gallery

E. E. Cummings: a poet's life by Catherine Reef
New York : Clarion Books, c2006.
149 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.

Finishing up April, National Poetry Month, with this biography of the famous US poet, e.e. cummings, seemed like a good idea.  And it was!  Reef has put together a wonderful and accessible biography of Cummings.  I really appreciated that Reef manages to present a lot of information in a manageable number of pages - and yet really develops a fascinating portrait of Cummings as a truly unique artist and human being.

I was really struck by how original Cummings was.  His poetry still has a freshness and vitality, but must have seemed stunningly unique when he published it. Reef also gives attention to Cummings serious work as a painter (as the self-portrait above reveals).

Reef also conveys what an original Cummings was in so many ways.  Though from a very conventional family, he rebelled by moving to Greenwich Village, volunteering to be an ambulance driver in WWI, traveling widely abroad, championing avant-garde artists (e.g. the Armory Show artists).

Reef manages to convey the various milieus that defined Cummings' life - WWI, the 1920s, WWII, the New Deal, etc.  She also brings Cummings to life as a man of great dedication, passion, talent, wit, playfulness and (yes) love - and all in the space of 149 pages enlivened with wonderful photographs and illustrations.

I would definitely recommend this book to any student curious about E. E. Cummings specifically or the life of an artist and writer generally.