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Jul. 18th, 2012 12:08 pmRobert Graves' Goodbye to All That is one of the foundational texts of "here is what WWI was like; it sucked." And I knew that going in, it's the reason I read it, which is why I was kind of surprised to find it starting out like any other autobiography.
The thing is that Robert Graves spends several chapters describing his family, his ancestors, his summer vacations, his school, his poetry magazine, his desperate crush on an underclassman, his adolescent flailings about the future, and then he's in the army and having hijinks training his soldiers, who mostly "joined the Army just before the War started as a cheap way of getting a training camp holiday," and you sort of don't realize it's happening until he's in the middle of the trenches and receiving consistently suicidal orders and everyone you meet one chapter is going to be dead the next.
And it's all absurd and terrible, all the way through, is the thing; the startling part is that the tone really doesn't change. From the absurdity of school to the absurdity of coming home from the front, where all his friends are dying, and finding out that his parents expect him not only to show up promptly for church but to carry his father there in a sedan chair -- it's all part and parcel of the same thing. It's just, you know, the war is deadlier.
Anyway. Well worth reading, but that isn't news. What is news, to me: guys, did you know there was an episode of TV where INDIANA JONES hung out with Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon and talked earnestly about poetry? Because I DID NOT until a chance youtube search told me so. CHECK IT:
I love these four minutes of early nineties TV totally unironically. Hot Young Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon swoop in, Deliver A Two-Minute Summary Of Their Famous Opinions About The War, and swoop out while Indy is clearly meant to be thinking "wow, war is complicated!" but actually mostly looks like he is thinking "dang, I never knew the trenches would be so full of hot poets." IT'S AMAZING.
(Speaking of, does anyone happen to have like a two-minute summary Dead Author Gossip version of why Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon eventually fell out? Because, you know, I would have thought it would be over the 'I got you declared mentally unstable without your permisson so as to make sure none of the high command sees your epic denunciation of the war! SHUT UP SIEGFRIED, ROBERT KNOWS BEST' but that doesn't seem to have been what did it . . )
The thing is that Robert Graves spends several chapters describing his family, his ancestors, his summer vacations, his school, his poetry magazine, his desperate crush on an underclassman, his adolescent flailings about the future, and then he's in the army and having hijinks training his soldiers, who mostly "joined the Army just before the War started as a cheap way of getting a training camp holiday," and you sort of don't realize it's happening until he's in the middle of the trenches and receiving consistently suicidal orders and everyone you meet one chapter is going to be dead the next.
And it's all absurd and terrible, all the way through, is the thing; the startling part is that the tone really doesn't change. From the absurdity of school to the absurdity of coming home from the front, where all his friends are dying, and finding out that his parents expect him not only to show up promptly for church but to carry his father there in a sedan chair -- it's all part and parcel of the same thing. It's just, you know, the war is deadlier.
Anyway. Well worth reading, but that isn't news. What is news, to me: guys, did you know there was an episode of TV where INDIANA JONES hung out with Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon and talked earnestly about poetry? Because I DID NOT until a chance youtube search told me so. CHECK IT:
I love these four minutes of early nineties TV totally unironically. Hot Young Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon swoop in, Deliver A Two-Minute Summary Of Their Famous Opinions About The War, and swoop out while Indy is clearly meant to be thinking "wow, war is complicated!" but actually mostly looks like he is thinking "dang, I never knew the trenches would be so full of hot poets." IT'S AMAZING.
(Speaking of, does anyone happen to have like a two-minute summary Dead Author Gossip version of why Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon eventually fell out? Because, you know, I would have thought it would be over the 'I got you declared mentally unstable without your permisson so as to make sure none of the high command sees your epic denunciation of the war! SHUT UP SIEGFRIED, ROBERT KNOWS BEST' but that doesn't seem to have been what did it . . )
