Excerpts from "The Tin Drum", Gunter Grass

This is surely a difficult read. Not sure if it was due to the translation (which emphasized on trying to capture the literal meaning and sense of the prose, rather than the fluidity of the reading experience), or to the nature of Mr. Grass' prose. The pace picks up every now and then but there are times where it dictates a slower speed while going over paragraphs that cover full pages, chopped into adjectives. It seems to me that the Tin Drum is not about a story, but rather about an experience. Few hints here and there about a value or judgement of any sort (all about too easy about a topic such as Nazi Germany right after the war), but it is embedded in deep art and craftsmanship. This makes it sit comfortably in modern era literature that captures a scene from a society without the audacity of judging it. Oskar, his family, and his nation. All ridden with disasters yet he hardly seem to be moved with any of them. The material gain was never a question and he shows some brilliant ability to "move on" except where it comes to nurses and their white dresses. A reason to raise this work above the level of the ground we walk on, to keep you gazing at it's people for a beauty value.

"You can start a story in the middle, then strike out boldly backward and forward to create confusion. You can be modern, delete all references to time and distance, and then proclaim or let someone else proclaim that at the eleventh hour you've finally solved the space-time problem. Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer be written, and then, behind your own back as it were, produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the last of the great novelists. I've also been told it makes a good impression to begin modestly by asserting that novels no longer have heroes because individuals have ceased to exist, that individualism is a thing of the past, that all human beings are lonely, all equally lonely, with no claim to individual loneliness, that they all form some nameless mass devoid of heroes. All that may be true. But as far as I and my keeper Bruno are concerned, I beg to state that we are both heroes, quite different heroes, he behind his peephole, I in front of it; and that when he opens the door, the two of us, for all our friendship and loneliness, are still far from being some nameless mass devoid of heroes." P:5

"Little people and big people, Little Dipper and Big Dipper, little and big ABCs, Little Hans and Karl the great, David and Goliath, Hop-o'-My-Thumb and the Giant; I remained the three-year-old, the gnome, Tom Thumb, stayed the half-pint that's never topped up, all to bypass distinctions like big and little catechisms, to flee the clutches of a man who, while shaving at the mirror, called himself my father, to avoid, as a so-called grownup of five foot eight, being bound to a business, a grocery store that Matzerath hoped would become the grown-up world for Oskar at twenty-one. So as not to have to rattle a cash register, I stuck to my drum and didn't grow a finger's breadth from my third birthday on, remained the three-year-old, who, three times as smart, was towered over by grownups, yet stood head and shoulders above them all, who felt no need to measure his shadow against theirs, who was inwardly and outwardly fully mature while others driveled on about development well into their dotage, who merely confirmed for himself what other learned with difficulty and other painfully, who felt no need to increase his shoe and trouser size from year to year just to prove he was growing.

And yet - and here Oskar too must admit to development - something was growing, and not always to my own advantage, ultimately taking on messianic proportions; but what grownup in my day had eyes and ears for Oskar, the eternally three-year-old drummer?" P:48-49

"Even in the entrance hall that school smell, described often enough, and more intimate than any known perfume in the world. On the flagstones of the hall stood four or five randomly placed granite basins out of whose depths water bubbled up simultaneously. With children, including some of my own age, crowding about them, they reminded me of my uncle Vinzent's sow in Bissau, who sometimes flung herself on her side an endured the similarly brutal and thirsty assault of her piglets.

The boys bent over the steadily collapsing towers of water in the basins, let their hair fall forward, and allowed the streams of water to poke about in their open mouths. I don't know if they were playing or drinking. Sometimes two boys would straighten up almost simultaneously with inflated cheeks and spray each other loudly in the face with mouth-warmed water, mixed you may be sure, with saliva and breadcrumbs. For my own part, upon entering the hall I had thoughtlessly cast a glance into the adjoining open gymnasium on the left, and, having spotted the leather pommel horse, the climbing poles and climbing rope, the terrifying horizontal bar, crying out as always for a giant swing, felt a very real thirst I couldn't suppress, and would gladly have taken a drink of water like all the other boys. But I  found it impossible to ask Mama, who was holding me by the hand, to lift Oskar, the toddler, over such a basin. Even if I stood on my drum, the fountain would remain out of reach. When, however, with a little jump I took a quick look over the edge of one of these basins and saw the greasy breadcrumbs nearly blocking the drain, and the nasty swill left standing in the bowl, the thirst I had stored up in my mind, and in my body as well, left me, as I wandered aimlessly past equipment in the desert wastes of the gymnasium." P:65

"FOR A LONG TIME, till November of thirty-eight to be exact, crouching under grandstands with my drum, with greater or lesser success I broke up rallies, reduced speakers to stutters, and turned marches and hymns to waltzes and foxtrots.

Today, as a private patient in a mental institution, when all that's past history, still being eagerly forged but from cold iron, I've achieved a proper distance from my drumming under grandstands. It would never occur to me to see myself as a member of the Resistance on the basis of six or seven disrupted rallies, three or four assemblies and parade marches drummed off stride. The term is quite fashionable these days. You hear of the spirit of Resistance, of Resistance circles. There's even talk of internal resistance, what's now called Inner Emigration. To say nothing of those honorable men so well versed in the scriptures who were fined by a growling air-raid warden for having failed to black out their bedroom windows and now call themselves Resistance fighters, men of the Resistance. " P:111

"My grandmother had Schwerdtfeger hove a hot brick under her four skirts every hour on the dot. Schwerdtfeger did this with an iron slide. He pushed a steaming packet under her scarcely raised skirts, dumped it, lifted the other one, then Schwerdtfeger's iron slid would reappear from beneath my grandmother's skirts with a nearly cold brick.

How I envied those bricks wrapped in newspaper, storing and bestowing their heat. To this day I wish I could lie like a toasty warm brick constantly being exchanged for myself under my grandmother's skirts. And just what, you may ask, is Oskar looking for under his grandmother's skirts? Does he wish to imitate his grandfather Koljiaczek and take liberties with the old woman? Does he seek oblivion, a home, the ultimate Nirvana?

Oskar replies: I was looking for Africa under her skirts, Naples perhaps, which everyone knows you must see before dying. Where all rivers converged, where all waters divided, where special winds blew, yet calm would descend, where the rains pounded down and yet you were dry, where ships made fast or weighed anchor at last, where the good Lord, who always liked warmth, sat by Oskar, where the devil dusted his spyglass, where angels played blind-man's buff; it was always summer under my grandmother's skirts, as the Christmas tree glowed, as I hunted for Easter eggs or marked every All Saint's day. Nowhere could I live more at peace with the calendar than under my grandmother's skirts." P:113

"IMAGINE, IF YOU PLEASE, a swimming pool tiled in azure blue, and in that pool, feeling suntanned and athletic, people swimming. At the edge of the pool men and women recline outside the bathing cabins. Some music from a loudspeaker perhaps, playing softly. Healthy boredom, an easygoing, casual eroticism that tautens the swimsuits. The tiles are smooth, but no one slips. A few signs with rules; but these too are unnecessary, for those who swim have come for just an hour or two and break the rules elsewhere. Now and then someone dives from the three-meter board but does not merit the attention of those swimming or tempt those lying to poolside to look up from their magazines. Suddenly a breeze. No, not a breeze. A young man, slowly, resolutely climbing the ladder of the ten-meter tower, rung by rung. The magazines with commentaries from Europe and abroad droop, eyes rise with him, bodies at rest now stretch, a young woman shades her eyes, someone loses his train of thought, a word remain unspoken, a minor flirtation, barely begun, comes to a sudden end in mid-sentence - for now he stands on the platform, well built, virile, takes a little hop, leans against the gently curving tabular steel railing, gazes down as if bored, casts off from the rail with an elegant thrust of the hips, ventures out upon the diving board towering high above, which dips at each step, looks down, has gaze tapering to an azure, startling small pool below in which red, yellow, green, white, red, yellow green, white, red, yellow bathing caps constantly rearranging themselves. His friends must be setting there, Doris and Erika Schuler, Jutta waves too. Careful not to lose his balance, he waves back. They call out. What do they want? Do it, they call out, dive, cries Jutta. But he wasn't planning on that at all, just wanted to see what it looked from up there and then climb back, slowly, rung by rung. And now they're shouting to him, so that everyone can hear, shouting loudly: Jump! Go on! Jump!

You have to admit that's a hell of a situation, no matter how close the diving board is to heaven. The Dusters and I found ourselves in a similar situation, though it wasn't the season for swimming, in January of forty-five. We had ventured high above, were now jostling about on the diving board, while below us, forming a solemn horseshoe around an empty pool, sat judges, associates, witnesses, and bailiffs." P:364-365

"I still contradict my keeper Bruno, who flatly maintains that only men can be proper nurses, the patient's addiction to female nurses being simply one more symptom of the disease; while the male nurse conscientiously cares for the patient and sometimes cures him, the female nurse follows the feminine path: she seduces the patient toward recovery or toward death, which she imbues with a tinge of eroticism that renders it palatable.

Thus says my keeper Bruno, whose view i am reluctant to support. Whoever needs to have his life reconfirmed by hospital nurses every other year or so, as I do, maintains his gratitude, and is not so quick to allow a grumpy if likable keeper filled with professional envy to alienate him from his Sisters" P:461

"Today I can smile when I recall the thought that then turned Oskar as yellow and mad as the wallpaper: I decided to study medicine and graduate as quickly as possible. I would become a doctor, as St. Mary's Hospital of course. I would drive Dr. Werner out, expose him, reveal his incompetence, even accuse him of manslaughter for botching a larynx operation. It would transpire that Herr Werner never went to medical school. He'd served in a field hospital during the war and picked up a thing or two: away with the charlatan! And Oskar becomes head surgeon, so young and yet such a responsible position. A new Sauerbruch strides through the echoing corridors with Sister Dorothea, his surgical assistant, at his side, surrounded by a retinue clad in white, visiting patients, making a last-minute decision to operate. How fortunate that film was never made." P:464-465

Finally I would like to conclude with what Salman Rushdie wrote about the novel, which I found at the end cover of this 50th anniversary translation by Breon Mitchell:
"This is what Grass's great novel said to me in its drumbeats: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things - childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves - that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers. I have tried to learn the lessons of the midget drummer."

The Charge of the Light Brigade - by Alfred Tennyson.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, by Wilfred Owen

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

المصريون يصوتون لاختيار رئيس مخلوع - عزت قمحاوي القدس العربي

سواء فاز مرشح العسكر أو مرشح الإخوان؛ فالاقتراع الذي يجري اليوم سيسفر عن اختيار أول رئيس مخلوع بعد ثورة 25 يناير ليصبح ثالث مخلوع في تاريخ الجمهورية المصرية بعد محمد نجيب العسكري الجانح إلى الديمقراطية الذي خلعه العسكر ومبارك الذي خلعه الشعب

لابد أن العسكر فرحون اليوم بوصف الانقلاب الذي أطلقه مراقبون أجانب، على اعتبار أن اختيار الرئيس هو الخطوة المتممة لخمسة عشر شهرًا من التآمر، لكن الرئيس سيولد فاقد الشرعية. وسوف يتعلمون من السياسة ما فاتهم أن يعرفوه أثناء خدمتهم العسكرية الهادئة والهنية؛ حيث لا يعني كسب معركة بالضرورة النصر في الحرب.
كان واضحًا أنهم يعدون المسرح من أجل تصفية الثورة ابتداء من التنحي الشكلي لمبارك وانتهاء باقتراع اليوم. و خلال خمسة عشر شهرًا عملوا بدأب لاستعادة الحكم الوراثي لصالح عائلة العسكر، بعد أن أطاحت له ثورة الشباب بمشروع التوريث في عائلة مبارك الطبيعية، المشروع الذي صمت عليه العسكر أنفسهم سنوات طوال.
ولم يتمكن العسكر من الوصول إلى نجاحهم المتوهم اليوم بلؤمهم وحده، بل بدعم أكيد من حماقة ما يسمى بالنخبة السياسية التي توكلت عن الثوار وفاقت غفلتها غفلة أبي موسى الأشعري في محنة التحكيم بين علي ومعاوية.
والأهم من ذلك أن العسكر لم ينجحوا إلا بشراكة أصيلة مع جماعة الإخوان المسلمين، شراكة متواصلة حتى اليوم، وفاء من الجماعة لتاريخها المؤسف إذ رضيت دائمًا بدور القفاز الذي تخنق به السلطة الديمقراطية ثم تلقي به في أقرب مقلب قمامة.
حتى أمس الجمعة رفض مرشح الإخوان الانسحاب من المواجهة مع مرشح الجيش بدعاوى شعبوية تافهة مثل 'إن الانسحاب ليس من شيم الرجال' وكأنه في معركة قتال بالسيف الأبيض البتار ولا يريد أن ينسحب!
هذه العبارة وحدها تكفي للدلالة على التظليل السياسي الذي تمارسه جماعة خبيرة في اقتصاد البقالة وتنقل أسلوب الربح يومًا بيوم من الاقتصاد إلى السياسة.
تضع الجماعة قدمًا مع الثوار وأخرى مع العسكر: انضمام متأخر إلى الثورة، جفاء للثورة واصطفاف مع العسكر لتمرير إعلان دستوري معيب، الفرح بالسيطرة على مجلس شعب غير دستوري، إنكار دم الشهداء الذين قتلهم العسكر بعد الثورة، ثم محاولة العودة إلى صفوف الثورة في أزمات المهارشة بينهم وبين العسكر عندما تنقلب جدًا في مناسبات مختلفة.
واليوم تدعي الجماعة الاحتكام إلى الصناديق قفزًا على كل ألاعيب التزوير والالتفاف قبل يوم التصويت، بل ويقول مرشحهم إن المليونيات يجب أن تتوجه السبت والأحد إلى لجان الانتخاب، لاستعادة الثورة.
الإخوان الآن صاروا الثورة، وبكل وضوح يعلنون هدفهم من المنافسة: إما وصول مرشحهم للحكم أو الوعد بثورة شاملة إن لم يفز!
لا يمكن أن تعرف السياسة انتهازية على هذا القدر من الغباء، ومن العدل أن نقول إن حماقة حماقة المرشحين الآخرين أكملت المهزلة. وحده البرادعي لم يخذل الثورة، فهو تعرض لاحتمالات الموت يوم 28 يناير ولا يريد أن تذهب التضحيات عبثًا. أعلن رفضه اللعب على أساس قواعد ظالمة وانسحب. ولنا أن نتصور المسار الذي كان من الممكن أن تتخذه الثورة المصرية لو امتنعت كل القوى الثورية عن الترشيح.
وقد فعلها المصريون عام 1919 إبان نفي سعد زغلول، حيث لم يجد الإنكليز من يقبل منصب رئيس الوزراء باستثناء وزير المالية القبطي يوسف وهبة، وحينها تصدى لمحاولة اغتياله عريان يوسف سعد، وكان طالبًا في كلية الطب وأراد أن يحمي البلاد من تحول الاغتيال السياسي إلى فتنة طائفية.
ونجحت نخبة مصر في لي ذراع الاستعمار الإنكليزي القوي، بينما فشلت النخبة الحالية في الوقوف بوجه الاستعمار المحلي الذي يفرضه حفنة من ضباط طاعنين في السن.
حتى عندما قبل ممثلو الثورة القواعد الظالمة ترشحوا بكثرة فتتت الأصوات، وأثبتوا أن القديم فاسد كله، وأن الحماقة ليست أفضل كثيرًا من اللؤم. مع ذلك لسنا في نهاية الطريق، ولم تسرق الثورة كما تقول الكثرة الكاثرة من المراقبين اليوم، ولكننا بلغة الدراما وصلنا إلى العقدة أو الذروة التي تعقبها حلقات أخرى تقدم الحل.
أقصى ما نجح فيه المتآمرون والحمقى هو إعادة الأوضاع إلى حدود 24 يناير. ولم تكن الأمور هادئة يوم 24 يناير، ومن أزاحوا رأس كومة الروث يوم 25 يناير يستطيعون إزالة البقية عقب نتيجة الانتخابات الصورية، بشرط العمل بطريقة جديدة.
كانت الخمسة عشر شهرًا ورشة سياسية كافية لإنضاج شباب الثورة، وصار واضحًا أن أمثال الشعب لا تكذب، وذيول الكلاب لا تستقيم.
لن يتنازل القديم الحاكم عن لؤمه ولن يتنازل القديم المعارض عن حماقاته، ويجب على تنظيمات شباب الثورة أن تلتقي بسرعة وتتفق على نظام بديل يضعه الثوار: دستور جديد مواز لما سيجري إعداده، خطة نهضة شاملة قائمة على دراسات مفصلة يمكن أن تقنع الكتلة الكبيرة المترددة بتبنيها.
باختصار، آن الآوان أن يمد الشباب قدمًا خارج الميدان؛ فخلال الخمسة عشر شهرًا استطاعت ميادين الاحتجاج في القاهرة وعواصم المحافظات النشطة أن تضغط على القديم وتجبره على بعض التنازلات، لكن سريعا ما يلتف يلتف القديم ليأخذ في خطوة تالية ما أعطاه في الخطوة السابقة، واستراح سراقي السلطة إلى حبس الشباب في الميدان وتحجيم دوره بهذا الشكل.
وهذه بوضوح ليست دعوة لوقف المليونيات، بل للتقدم إلى الخطوة الصحيحة التي لم تأخذها الثورة بعد ومغادرة موقع رد الفعل؛ فالثوار يثورون لكي يحكموا بأنفسهم، لا بتوكيل غيرهم. وكل واحد من المصطفين في الميدان يفهم في الاقتصاد وفي السياسة أكثر مما يفهم كل من وكلتهم الثورة من قدامى الأشرار والحمقى، بمن فيهم الرئيس الجديد المخلوع

Aftermath, by Siegfried Sassoon

HAVE you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

خطاب السلام (مقتطف من "خطب الدكتاتور الموزونة") - محمود درويش

وأما الذين قَضوْا في سبيل الدفاع عن الذكريات
وعن وَهمهم، فلهم أجرُهُمْ، أو خطيئتُهم، عند ربهمُو..
حرام حلال
حلال حرامُ..
• • •
.. ويا أيها الشعب، يا سيّد المعجزات، ويا باني الهرمين!
أُريدك أن ترتفع
إلى مستوى العصر. صمتاً وصمتاً، لنسمع وقع خُطانا على
الأرض، ماذا دفعنا لكي نندفعْ..
ثلاث حروب - وأرض أقل
وخمسون ألف شهيد - وخبز أقل
وتأميم أفكار شعب يحب الحياة - ورقص أقل
فهل نستطيع المضي أماماً؟ وهذا الأمام حُطام
أليس السلام هو الحل؟
عاش السلامُ
• • •
.. وبعد التأمل في وضعنا الداخلي
وبعد الصلاة على خاتم الأنبياء، وبعد السلام عليّ..
وجدت المدافع أكثر من عدد الجند في دولتي
وجدت الجنود يزيدون عمّا تبقى لنا من حبوب
لهذا، سأطلب من شعبي الحرِّ أن يتكيّف فوراً
وأن يتصرف خير التصرّف مع خطتي:
سأجنح للسلم إن جنحوا للحروب
سأجنح للغرب إن جنحوا للغروب
سأجنح للسلم مهما بنوا من حصون، ومهما أقاموا
على أرضنا، ليعيش السلام.
• • •
حروب.. حروب.. حروب.. أما من قيادة
لتوقف هذا العبث!
وتوقف إنتاج مستقبل غامض من جثث!
أفي الغاب نحن لنقتل جيراننا الباحثين على أرضنا عن وسادة؟
وما الحرب، يا شعب، إلا غرائز أولى
خلاف صغير على الأرض. وما الأرض إلا رمال على الرمل هل
دمكم، أيها الناس، أرخصُ من حفنة الرمل؟
عمَّ نُفتش في الحرب، يا شعبي الحر، هل عن سيادة؟
أمعنى السيادة أن نتقوقع في ذاتنا،
ونعادي العدو المُصاب بداء التوسّع والخوف؟
فليتوسّع قليلاً، لماذا نخاف.. لماذا نخاف
فهل تستطيع الجرادة أن تأكل الفيل، أو تشرب النيل؟
في الأرض متسع للجميع، وفي الأرض متسع للسعادة..
ونحن، هنا، ثابتون..
هنا فوق خمسة آلاف عام من المجد والحب، مهما يمر الظلامُ
وعاش السلام.

The naked and the dead - Norman Mailer

This novel is a nice addition to any serious war literature reader. The writer tries his best to reflect on the many mirrors that reflects the image of the military machine during peace and war. For the professionals as well as the drafted. Mr. Mailer puts a great effort and saves no paper reflecting on the most important element in combat: The landscape. He puts some great detail, sometimes too much, on the grounds and it's difficulties as well as the weather conditions at Anopopei.

The second great emphasis you will see in this work, as any other good war literature, is that military grounds are one of the most amazing labs for human behaviour and interactions. Especially in such Spartan conditions and with so much time available between combats. Where you will get a first hand experience with different aspects of humanity under a cynical to normal light. Mr. Mailer declared in his forward that this book is done under the influence of Tolstoy: The sum of good and bad of humanity is a little bit more in the good side. That judgement was left to the reader to see after this exposition of the naked human elements in that campaign. The detailed, yet limited, effect of the flashbacks for the characters, main and secondary, will be of little effect in forming your judgement on any of them though the considerable area given to them.

Quotes:

"..Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful. In any case, good or bad, it reminds us that life is like a gladiators' arena for the soul and so we can feel strengthened by those who endure, and feel awe and pity for those who do not.

That fine edge in Tolstoy, the knowledge that compassion is value-less without severity (for otherwise it cannot defend itself against sentimentality), gave The Naked and the Dead whatever enduring virtue it may possess and catapulted the amateur who wrote it into the grim ranks of those successful literary men and women who are obliged to become professional in order to survive -- no easy demand, for it would insist that one must be able to do a good day's work on a bad day, and indeed that is a badge of honor decent professionals are entitled to wear." P:xii

 "What do you expect? Do you think you're going to go home a hero? Listen, when you get home folks are going to look at you and say, 'Arthur Stanley, you been gone a long time,' and you'll say, 'yeah,' and then they'll say, 'Well, things've been pretty rough here, but I guess they're going to improve some. You're sure lucky you missed it all.'' P16

"He had liked Hennessey, but it had been the kind of fondness he had for many of the men in the platoon - it included the possibility that it might be ended like this. What bothered Red was the memory of the night they had sat on deck during the air raid when Hennessey had inflated his life belt. It gave Red a moment of awe and panic as if someone, something, had been watching over their shoulder that night and laughing. There was a pattern where the shouldn't be" P39

"He was also a frightful snob. Hearn, recognizing himself as a snob, could be sympathetic, although his own snobbery was of different order; Hearn always classified people even if it took him five hundred types to achieve any kind of inclusiveness. The General's snobbery was of a simpler order. He knew every weakness and every vice of his staff officers, and yet a colonel was superior to a major regardless of their abilities....That in itself was understandable; like all men of great vanity, the General was looking for an intellectual equal, or at least the facsimile of an intellectual equal to whom he could expound his nonmilitary theories, and Hearn was the only man on his staff who had the intellect to understand him." P78

It was the riddle of what made the General tick that kept Hearn on. After 28 years the only thing that interested him vitally was to uncover the least concealed quirks of any man or woman who diverted him. He had said once, "When I find the shoddy motive in them I'm bored. Then the only catch is how to say good-bye." P79

The General worked on him even more than he affected the General, and Hearn loathed the very idea. P79

"I'm a little disappointed that you reached on such a primal level...You can indulge your righteous rage but the things it comes out of are pretty cheap. The trick is to make yourself an instrument of your own policy. Whether you like it or not, that's the highest effectiveness man has achieved." P82

"Well, then, follow me out in this. And you're going to have to take my word, for I've made a study. When I was your age, a little older, the type of thing that preoccupied me was what makes a nation fight well."

"I imagine it would be a kind of identity between the people and the country whether it's for good reasons or bad."

The General shook his head. "That's a liberal historian's attitude. You'd be surprised what a tiny factor that is." The lamp was beginning to sputter and he reached over to adjust the valve, his face lit rather dramatically for a moment by the light source beneath his chin. "There are just two main elements. A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in his past."

"That's the whole works, huh?"

"There's one other big factor O've played with for a time. If you're fighting in defense of your own soil, then perhaps you're a little more effective."
"Then you come back to my point."
"I wonder if you know how complicated that is. If a man fights on his own soil, it's also a great deal easier for him to desert. That's one problem I never have to consider on Anopopei. It's true the other thing overweighs it, but stop and think about it. Fondness for a country is all very lovely, it even is a moral factor at the beginning of a war. But fighting emotions are very undependable, and the longer a war lasts the less value they have. After a couple of years of war, there are only two considerations that make a good army: a superior material force and a poor standard of living. Why do you think a regiment of Southerners is worth two regiments of Easterners?"
"Idon't think they are."
"Well, it happens to be true." The General placed his fingertips together judiciously and looked at Hearn. "I'm not peddling theories. This is observation. And the conclusions leave me, as a general officer, in a poor position. We have the highest standard of living in the world and, as one would expect, the worst individual fighting soldiers of any big power. Or at least in their natural state they are. They are comparatively wealthy, are spoiled, and as Americans they share most of them the peculiar manifestation of our democracy. They have and exaggerated idea of the rights due themselves as individuals and no idea at all of the rights due to others. It's the reverse of the peasant, and I'll tell you right now it's the peasant who makes the soldier."
"So what you've got to do is break them down," Hearn said.
"Exactly. Break them down. Every time an enlisted man sees an officer get an extra privilege, it breaks him down a little more."
"I don't see that. It seems to me they'd hate you more."
"They do. But they also fear us more. I don't care what kind of many you give me, if I have him long enough I'll make him afraid. Every time there's what you call an Army injustice, the enlisted man involved is confirmed a little more in the idea of his inferiority." (P:174-175)

"And they were always young, Air Corps pilots and ensigns, and good-looking girls in fur coats, and always the government secretary or two, the working girl as a carry-over from the fraternity parties when she was always the girl who could be made because in some mysterious way the women of the lower classes could be depended upon to copulate like jack rabbits. And they all knew they were going to die soon with a sentimental and unstated English attitude which was completely phony. It came from books they had never read, and movies they shouldn't have seen; it was fed by the tears of their mothers, and the knowledge quite shocking, quite unbelievable, that a lot of them did die when they went overseas....But nevertheless they wore it magically until you believed in it when you were with them. "(P:240-241)

"It would not be this girl for Wyman's but it would some other, and it didn't matter because both girls would look the same in thirty years and Wyman would never amount to very much." P257

"The campaign had gone sour. After the week of  successful advances that followed the failure of the Japanese attack across the river, Cummings had paused for a few days to strengthen his lines and complete his road net. It had been planned as a temporary halt before breaching the Toyaku Line, but the layoff was fatal. When Cummings started again, his tactics were as well conceived as they had ever been, his staff performance as thorough, his patrols as carefully planned, but nothing happened. The front had been given its first chance to solidify, and like a weary animal it had done even more; it had fallen asleep, it had hibernated. A deep and unshakable lethargy settled over the front-line troops.

In the two weeks that followed the rest period, after a series of intensive patrols and strong local attacks, his lines had advanced a total of four hundred yards in a few sectors, and had captured a total of three Japanese outposts. Companies went out on combat patrols, engaged in desultory fire fights, and then retreated back to their bivouacs. The few times an important piece of terrain was taken, the men had relinquished it at the first serious counterattack. As a sure sign of the reluctant temper of the troops, the best line officers were becoming casualties now, and Cummings knew the type of engagement that signified. An attack would be made on some strings point, and the men would lag behind, the co-ordination would be poor, and it would end with a few men, a few good officers and noncoms, engaging a superior force while their support evaporated.

Cummings made several trips to the front and found the men had bedded down. The bivouacs had been improved, there were drainage pits and overhead covers on the foxholes, and in a few companies duckwalks had been laid in the mud. The men would not have done this if they expected to move. It represented security and permanence, and it introduced a very dangerous change in their attitudes. Once they halted and stayed in one place long enough for it to assume a familiar connotations, it was immeasurably  harder to get them to fight again. They were dogs in their own kennel now, Cummings decided, and they would bark sullenly at orders.

Each day that elapsed without any fundamental change on the front would only increase their apathy, and yet Cummings knew that he was temporarily powerless. After intense preparation, he had mounted a large attack with good artillery plotting, some Air Cops bomber support which had been granted only after much pleading, had thrown his tanks into it, his reserve troops, and after a day the attack had ground down to nothing; the troops had halted before the most insignificant resistance, had gained in one small sector perhaps a quarter a mile. When they had done and the losses been counted, the minor alterations in his front line established, he had all of the Toyaku line still before him, unbreached, unthreatened. It was humiliating.

Indeed, it was terrifying. The communications from corps and army were growing progressively impatient. Soon, like a traffic jam, that pressure would be backed up all the way to Washington, and Cummings could imagine without difficulty the conversations that must be going on in certain rooms of the Pentagon. "Well, what's happening here, what's this, Anopopei, what's holding it up, whose division, Cummings, Cummings, well, get the man out of there, get someone else."

He had known it was dangerous to rest the troops for a week, but it was a gamble he had had to take while he finished the road, and it had boomeranged. The shock cut deeply into the General's confidence. The process at most times was unbelievable to him, and he was suffering the amazement and terror of a driver who finds his machine directing itself, starting and halting when it desires. He had heard of this, military lore was filled with such horror tales, but he had never imagined it would happen to him. It was incredible. For five weeks the troops had functioned like an extension of his own body. And  now, apparently without cause, or at least through causes too intangible for him to discover, he had lost his sensitive control. No matter how he molded them now the men always collapsed into a soled resistant mass like dishrags, too soft, too wet to hold any shape which might be given them. At night he would lie sleepless on his cot, suffering an almost unbearable frustration; there were times when he was burning with the impotence of his rage. One night he had lain for hours like an epileptic emerging from a coma, his hands clasping and unclasping endlessly, his eyes staring fixedly at the dim outlines of the ridgepole of his tent. The power, the intensity of the urges within himself, inexpressible, balked, seemed to course through his limbs, beating in senseless fury against the confines of his body. There was everything he wanted to control, everything, and he could not direct even six thousand men. Even a single man had been able to balk him.

He had made furious efforts for a time, launched that attack, had kept the troops patrolling constantly, but deep inside himself, unadmitted, he was becoming frightened. A new attack on which he had Major Dalleson and the G-3 staff working for days had been called off several times already. Always there had been good superficial reasons - a large shipment of supplies was due from a few Liberty ships in a day or two, or else he felt more advisable to capture first some minor features of land which might seriously impede the attack. But actually he was afraid; failure now would be fatal. He had expanded too much on that first attack, and if this one foundered, weeks and possibly months would accrue before a third major drive could be initiated. By that time he would be replaced.

His mind had become dangerously lassitudinous, and his body had been troubled for some time by a painful diarrhea. In an effort to scour his ailment he had had officers' mess suffer the most rigid inspections, but despite the new standards of cleanliness his diarrhea continued. It was acutely difficult now to conceal his annoyance with the most insignificant details, and it was affecting everything about him. Hot wet days sloughed past, and the officers in headquarters snapped at each other, had petty quarrels and cursed the unremitting heat and rain. Nothing seemed to move in all the cramped choked spaces of the jungle, and it developed an attitude in which no one expected anything to move. The division was going subtly and inevitably to pot, and he felt powerless to alter it.

Hearn suffered the results in all their immediacy. Without the disturbing and fascinating intimacy the General had granted him in his first weeks as an aide, the job had become reduced quickly to its onerous humiliating routine. A change had come about in their relationship, quietly achieved, but its end product left him in a formal and obviously subordinate status. The General no longer confided in him, no longer lectured him, and the duties of his job, which had been treated between them until now as a tacit joke, had become demanding and loathsome. As the campaign floundered along day after day, the General became stricter at the discipline in his headquarters, and Hearn suffered the brunt of it. 
p299-300

"The average man always sees himself in relation to other men as either inferior or superior. Women play no part in it. They're an index, a yardstick among other gauges, by which to measure superiority."  p322

"When we come kicking into the world, we are God, the universe is the limit of our senses. and when we get older, when we discover that the universe is not us, it's the deepest trauma of our existence." p323

"...After a year it is completely naked, apparent to her, that he is alone, that he fight out battles with himself upon her body, and something withers in her. There is still all the authority she has left, the family in Boston streets and the history hanging upon them, and she has left it, to be caught in a more terrifying authority, a greater demand.

This is all of course beneath words, would be unbearable if it were ever said, but their marriage re-forms, assumes a light and hypocritical companionship with a void at the centre, and very little love making now, painfully isolated when it occurs. He retreats from her, licks his wounds, and twists in the circle beyond which he cannot break. Their social life becomes far more important". P416

"In the morning none of it seems so awful, and by the end of a week he has nearly forgotten it. But on his side it marks the end or almost the end of one expectation from marriage, and for Natalie it means she must pretend excitement in order to avoid hurting him. Their marriage settles again like a foundation seeking a bedrock..." P491

"Roth stopped as if had been slapped across the face. For a moment in his weeping he had been expecting the warm arms of his mother. They were gone now; everything was gone. He was alone. It gave him a bitter pleasure, as if in having plumbed this last rejection he knew at last that there was no further humiliation he could receive. The foundation stones of his despair are at least stones. " P576