Howdy, book club. I have lots of thoughts on my pick for this "month", Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, and I hope you'll all get around to posting your thoughts within the next week or so.
I'll spare you any broader interpretations for now and instead point you in three directions we could discuss, though I'm sure you've got things in mind too, and since you retain all of your limbs and senses and since you lack a big pus-y face-hole (or at least you did when I last saw you), sharing them shouldn't be too much a hassle, right?
Stream-of-consciousness on a scale as large as a novel is a bit of a high-wire act to pull off, and I for one thought Trumbo did it well. Much of the novel takes place between Joe's ears (or at least where his ears used to be), and as he discovers and negotiates an understanding of what's happened to him, and as he attempts to mark and pass the time, and as he reminisces on moments of loss (his dad, at the bakery, Lazrus, etc.), and as he attempts to communicate with the nurses and doctors, I found a consistency to Bonham's perspective that made the novel cohere. Joe's not a complex person, really, and that comes across effectively and through Trumbo's linguistic restraint....
...which lent the political allegory depth. The book obviously aspires to be a Polemic, provoking discussions about the effect of war on soldiers who're essentially pawns, but that doesn't really explain its staying power through the decades. Anti-war novels aren't anything new--it's the duty of the artist to speak truth to power, right?--so for my monies' worth what Trumbo's done here is execute a scenario that's so shocking, so violent and disturbing, that the volume of our discussions about war necessarily got turned up. Which got me thinking...
...about modern warfare. Joe gets hurt on the last day of fighting in World War I, and though I won't bore you with details (for now), it's generally believed that WWI was the first truly horrific war. Artillery shells--just like the one that took all but Joe's mind and chest-skin--were first used in WWI, and their effect on the number of casualties is staggering. And this is to say nothing of mustard gas, machine guns, airplanes, tanks and a dozen other "modern" warwaging technologies. Before WWI, war was a relatively genteel affair: soldiers accompanied by marching bands, aristocrats sipping tea on nearby hillsides, etc. After WWI, humanity had to deal with a whole new reality: we can kill each other en masse, and pretty easily. Such knowledge was clearly not anodyne to Mr. Trumbo.
There's a lot more I'd like to discuss--the working-class struggles depicted, the motif, the nurses, the notion of death as rebirth and of speaking for the dead, the Christ halluination, books I should reread, and that fucking rat scene, among others--but for now, let's just get this ball a-rollin'.
I chose this book because a screenwriter friend of mine, Mark (who just got a big paycheck) told me it was his favorite novel, and I'd tried to read it a few times before and just couldn't get into it. So far, the club here has been a nice way to cross such books off my list, and for that I'm grateful. I'm also curious as to what our next book will be, so Courtney, please do share when you decide.
Below is the trailer for the 2008 one man stage production of Johnny that'll be released on DVD sometime this year. It stars Ben McKenzie from The OC and looks...interesting.
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I think that Hemingway did anti-war much better than Trumbo.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear how.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the debate? The best novel with an anti-war theme? Or the novel with the most effective anti-war message? I think in terms of the first question, only Joseph Heller and Tim O'Brien are up there with Hemingway. However, for a purely evocative anti-war sentiment, I think I'd have a war monger read JGHG before Farewell to Arms or Catch-22.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I smell a tangential debate coming on.
ReplyDeleteCatch-22 to me is a satire of bureaucracy moreso than of war, of the institutions that mitigate pointless yet measurable action through quotas and whatnot. In addition to being utterly fucking nonstop hilarious, C-22 serves more as a root canal to the banality of paperwork, whether it's bombing campaigns of Yossarian, the middling middle management of Major Major Major Major, or the sort of trivia that ex-PFC Wintergreen constantly endures. (Note to Maggie: read the dang thing already--I'm curious about your thoughts on it!)
As for Papa, I never really saw him as a straightforward anti-war type. In addition to the fact that he actively sought "action" in WW's I and II, he also found in combat, I think, just the sort of fire that gave the grace he so often extolled a storytelling mechanism for it to happen under. Hemingway was interested in character much more than screed, or at least he did in the ways I read him.
Right on about O'Brien though, and the way he sacrifices literal truth at the altar of an essential (or emotional) one feeds pretty unambiguously into any discussion of whether D. Trumbo needed research assistants to tell his tale the way he did.
Too, Michael Herr, for what it's worth, did a pretty stellar job in Dispatches of portraying the horrors of enlistment and war (i.e., the first 90 minutes of Full Metal Jacket). And for that matter, Don Quixote, Heart of Darkness, The Naked and the Dead and (I bet) Gravity's Rainow all explore the sorts of horrors of war I've subjected you all too for some reason...
No comment on this tangental debate (yet), but as a tangent to a tangent, I feel compelled to announce that when my turn comes around to pick a book you can all bet that it will be something incredibly vaginal. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe word itself makes some men (like me) uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteVagina.
How's about another word. Penis. The Sun Also Rises. The man's penis is rendered at the very least ineffectual, and because of it his woman goes for another man. Joe still has his junk in tact, if nothing else, and he even gets his nurse to jack him off! I just don't see anyone being swayed much by his simplistic argument if they aren't already on the bandwagon. It's too emotional. So, people on the other side of the emotional fence are not going to be swayed, nor are the people who think about it intellectually. Additionally, I may or may not have been drinking when I wrote this initial post.
ReplyDelete