In short: Trumbo makes valid points, although not very complex. He needed an editor. He needed a research assistant.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Sophomoric
While I agree with Mr. Trumbo's arguments against war, I felt that a lot of the argument was rather sophomoric. He does not communicate any of the complex political nature of conflict. Maybe this is because Joe is supposed to be a "regular Joe." Maybe his thinking is not as complex. There are positives and negatives in this sort of argument. First it is more accessible to a larger readership, which is a positive thing. However, I also feel that many of his arguments may be dismissed by people who see themselves as complex thinkers and appreciate correct grammar. I find it hard to believe that he got this book published and that it was so widely read when he so obviously needed an editor, as well as a research assistant. For example, Joe's hospital care must be inaccurate. If he was truly in the hospital for that long a time and received no more care than he described he would have died of bed sores long before 7 years. Also, there's no way that he could have survived a blast like and have not had a brain injury. The blast wave alone would have churned his neurons enough for him not to be able to put together a complete sentence. I have an answer for the question at the back of the book about why the "counter-culture" of the 60's picked up this book and championed it. It is because it is simple enough that they could still understand it even though they had killed off most of their brain cells dropping acid. Fortunately they also knew enough to get up off their asses and march to Washington.
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I still have some thoughts churning about so expect something more substantial soon, but for now this made me think about a few things I hadn't considered before.
ReplyDelete1. I agree this probably simplifies the complexities of this type of global conflict (then or now) but if you are going to make an argument for pure pacifism this was probably the kind of way to make it. Good arguments are as emotional as they are logical. Or at least I tell my students that.
2. I hadn't considered some of the more scientific/medical angles of judging the realism of the novel. However, I had begun to question if such a pitiful human existence, for that length of and place in time, was actually physically possible. So I guess I appreciate that confirmation.
3. It's strange that the first two books we've read really probably could have used an editor. However, that's been said about a lot of groundbreaking literary stylists. I wonder what that says about us.
Anyway, keep it going, y'all.
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ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you on Trumbo's argument for pacifism. At the very least it seemed very... ham-fisted. Obvious. Subtle like a bat-to-the head.
ReplyDeleteWhen I mentioned that I was going to be reading this book to my sister's boyfriend, he mentioned that it was one of his favorite books, but that it wasn't as effective an anti-war book as some others he's read... I think he mentioned either The Thin Red Line or All Quiet on the Western Front, but I honestly can't remember which one off the top of my head. I think I'm going to ask him if he could write up his thoughts on it... I suspect he has a very different view of war and pacifism than we do as a group. He's a Marine, out of active duty for several years now, but once a Marine, always a Marine.
I'm with Dan on the simplicity of the argument. The passage I kept returning to was Joe's contemplation of liberty and honor (and women!), and his ultimate conclusion that those were just abstract words and that words are no reason to fight a war. On one hand, I thought, "Right on!" But "what if's" just kept nagging at my brain. I can't help but think that honor and dignity DO mean something. I mean, if everybody you know helps with a task but you don't, you feel crappy, right? Even if the task was something that you didn't personally feel needed to be done? Well, what if half the world went to defend the poor women who were being raped by the Huns, but Americans didn't. We'd feel crappy. We'd feel dishonored, as if we'd let somebody down. On an individual level, fighting for a concept doesn't make sense. But on a societal level it sometimes does.
ReplyDeleteI'll agree with Courtney that I'm a bit torn on the passage regarding liberty and honor (which I'm pretty sure was in the chapter I referenced in the stream of consciousness thread). I get where you guys are coming from that Joe (or, I guess, Trumbo) makes far too simple an argument, but I still can't help but tend to agree with it. Liberty for whom? Freedom for whom? Certainly not for individuals who are doing the actual fighting and dying for those words. When someone dies in war, he is essentially trading his own liberty and freedom for someone else’s. We don’t really get more of it, then. It just trades places.
ReplyDeleteSo, on one hand, words like liberty and freedom become words used to manipulate folks into fighting other, more powerful people's battles. For me, that's where Joe was coming from. He gave everything for a war that had little to do with him and his personal freedoms or liberties. So, really - what's the point? They pinned that medal on his chest marking him a hero, but I don't imagine he felt particularly heroic when all's said and done. Even if he did feel heroic, I imagine he’d rather trade that feeling in for a chance to have his face back.
Of course, the reality is that it’s way more complicated than all this. There are times when liberty and freedom are much, much more than just words. Imagine telling 10 million Holocaust victims that their liberty was just an abstract concept, and abstract concepts aren't worth fighting and dying for. (Or, for that matter, that the sacrifices their liberators made weren’t honorable…)
One more thing: as for the comments on Trumbo's style, I sort of assumed the missing punctuation and the general liberties he took with grammar was intentional rather than a result of a lazy editor. Again, it points back to stream of consciousness - people don't think in complete sentences.
ReplyDeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong, but a Polemic's main purpose is to fly, in largesse, in the face of a conventional wisdom, like, say the prevailing logic behind going to war, so if Trumbo's arguments seem simplistic, maybe it's because the size of the institution he's going after uses similarly broad rhetorical strokes, albeit ones with which we've been much better indoctrinated.
ReplyDeleteI love it when writers swing for the fences like this...
Excuse me while I look up "Polemic," and "in largesse" Sometimes I'm a bit ignorant. I do agree with Steve on the point that Trumbo is using similar type arguements to the type the government uses. Most of us are smarter than the government and don't buy into it. However, with the Iraq war most of the media did, and supported the war before they were against it. On this measure, Trumbo's arguements work very well.
ReplyDeleteI think that it is a good point that the poor grammar may have been intentional. I did not realize it at the time I was reading it.
I also think that while wars like Vietnam support Trumbos ideas, World War II refutes them, at least from an American stand point. I do wish that maybe someone had made this book mandatory reading for all Germans around say 1932.
Hehe. While "polemic" was in my wheelhouse, I must admit I had to look up "anodyne." Also, I may have had a few drinks while writing this :)
ReplyDeleteTrumbo himself admits that "After Pearl Harbor [the book's] subject matter seemed as inappropriate for the times as the shrieking of bagpipes."
What can I say except what's the point of having obscure words kicking around the old attic if I'm not gonna use them in my beloved book club? Recondite forces compel me.:)
ReplyDeleteYeah, the thing that interests me now that I've been really chewing on Johnny this week is the same thing that stokes a hell of a lot of my WWI "hobby": the intersection of technology and death. Starting with The Great War and and taking us all the way through Fat Man and Little Boy, we humans got really quickly good at creating new and massive ways to kill each other. All we really needed to get the ball rolling and all these new weapons in use was for something simple and shoulda-been-historically-insignificant happen, Franz Ferdinand getting capped. (By the way, ask me sometime about his assassination--it was really something. Or, you know, don't.:))
Contrast the advent of war technology--artillery shells and mass-produced machine guns and tanks (which Churchill more-or-less kinda invented in 1915) and mustard gas and whatnot--with Johnny's beautiful second chapter, essentially a love letter to the sustainable, idyllic, agrarian life that the Bonhams lead in Colorado. This way of life--growing your own crops, canning your own vegetables, weekly visits to the hamburger man, learning from your dad so you can teach your sons, etc.--seems so very disconnected to the harsh realities of warfare, and from there, these two worlds, the trenches and town square, are on a collision course.
The dovetailing of technological progress and the "simple life" is heartbreakingly rendered in a single paragraph:
"Mr. Hargraves who was superintendent of schools made a speech before [Lincoln Beechy's] flight. He told about how the invention of the airplane was the greatest step forward man had made in a hundred years. The airplane said Mr. Hargraves would cut down the distance between nations and peoples. The airplane would be a great instrument in making people understand one another in making people love one another. The airplane said Mr. Hargraves was ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity and mutual understanding. Everyone would be friends said Mr. Hargraves when the airplanes knitted the world together so that the people of the world understood each other" (21).
If only...