Introduction This is your Reader's Guide for the USAFI noncredit offering, A 1001, The Military Novel. Scope of the Offering A 1001, The Military Novel, is a survey of the military novel as it has developed in the Western World during the 19th and 20th centuries. It consists of just a few of the many hundreds of pieces of fiction dealing with war or military life. This Reader's Guide describes the social, cultural, and historical background of each historical period as it relates to the novels which describe the period, presents short biographical sketches of the author, gives you a few suggestions to enhance your enjoyment of the novel, and suggests other books (both fiction and nonfiction) which deal with the same general topic or period. Course A 1001 is a noncredit offering. There are no written assignments and no terminal examinations. Materials for the Offering This Reader's Guide is the only component supplied by USAFI. The military novels can be obtained at your local library. Titles and editions are listed on pages 14-15 of this Introduction. Objective of the Offering The objective of A 1001, The Military Novel, is to provide stimulating materials for members of the Armed Forces on active duty, primarily for leisure reading. It aims to reveal the social significance or impact of warfare as viewed by the novelist. It does not attempt to define precisely the military novel as a genre. It merely conceives it as a story (often based on fact) of considerable length, dealing with cross sections of the social order during wartime. The author may or may not have been a participant in the scenes he describes. However, in selecting these novels, we have tried to choose only those which were written within 30 or 40 years of the events they describe. Thus, we have some assurance that the novel represents at least some current of feeling evoked at the period which its action represents. The author who writes today about the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863) cannot possibly see the events with the same eyes as the one who wrote about the same battle in 1866 or 1895. This is not to say that today's author would be less accurate. He would probably be more objective, being further from the actual event. But his reactions would be less immediate to the events than the author of 1865 or 1895, who may even have been involved in them. This criterion limits the number of military novels to be included in this offering, but we are not limited as to the number which we can suggest as additional reading. There is also the advantage that a novel written in 1895 which is still popular or worthy to be in print today is likely to have greater literary merit than one on the contemporary best-seller list. Several of the authors whose works are included here are world renowned: Count Leo Tolstoy, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway (winner of both the Nobel and the Pulitzer Prize); Herman Wouk and John Hersey have won the Pulitzer Prize for novels included in our offering. The military novel is sometimes a vehicle of social protest, representing war as a stupid, brutal, unholy thing. It may be a great propaganda weapon, rallying people to its ideas and ideology. It may deal with war as high adventure, as tragedy, as comedy. It may be written as a satire, as a saga of heroism and endurance, or as an exposé of incompetence, cowardice, brutality, and deceit. It may express the attitudes of a large segment of society or of just one person-the author, who has something on his mind and chooses to unburden himself through this medium. The military novel may be accurate in portraying historical events, or it may merely pay lip service to a few selected and isolated facts manipulated by the author as a framework for the play of his imagination. Some military novels have had a great and lasting influence upon succeeding generations; some provide a pleasant pastime for a few hours and are forgotten within a year. For A 1001, The Military Novel, we have included only a few of the many hundreds of military novels which have appeared since the beginning of the 19th century. These books are available either in hard cover or paperback cover. We have restricted our list to European novels which have been translated into English and British and American novels written about wars of the past two centuries ( the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, European colonial expeditions or wars, the American Civil War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, and the French campaign in Indochina). Land, naval, aerial, and "bush," or guerrilla, warfare are all represented. Two or three of the novels are classics that would appear on any list of modern fiction. Others were selected because they can throw some light on the art and/or science of war. Some are just rousing adventure stories. Some became best sellers because of their intrinsic worth or because of their empathy with the public opinion of the time. Some have achieved the questionable accolade of being made into motion pictures. In this case, the reader may enjoy comparing the novel with the motion picture. Thoughts on Reading Novels Most novels are read and enjoyed without a great deal of preparation or study. But a reader may certainly enhance his enjoyment and profit from reading a novel by understanding the elements of fiction: Title, Point of View (who tells the story), Setting, Plot (the marshalling of events), Characterization (revelation of personalities and individual motives), Theme (point about life that the author is trying to make), and Style. In addition to the war interest, many of these novels are worthy of discussion for their literary merit. War and Peace is generally conceded to be one of the greatest novels of world literature. Ernest Hemingway's writing won him the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes for literature. If you undertake literary discussions, you should avoid condensed editions. War and Peace in the paperback edition published by Bantam, for instance, while satisfactory for the war descriptions, is scarcely more than half the book. It is impossible to assess artistic merit on the basis of a portion of a work. One of the requisites of a work of art is its total impact. For literary study of this novel you might well begin with testing the Bantam abridged edition against a first-rate complete trans |