Salute, Guppy & SysError
Fussell knows his art and poetry and stories and war and sex and martinis and academia. (This will sound hyper-nerdy; but, you ever catch him on C-SPAN?)
What other poetry classicist would quote Thomas Pynchon's World War I general's sexual fantasies? I admire him so much that I even give his books as gifts to girls.
My Christmas reading has been Gibbon. "The History of the Decline...etc" turns out to be one of the more exciting books I've read. [I'm only as far as one-quarter into volume i of the vi.]
And, doesn't it sound like he's describing Rooks here:
But this fierce multitude, incapable of concerting or executing any plan of national greatness, was agitated by various and often hostile intentions. [...] the union of the several tribes was extremely loose and precarious. The barbarians were easily provoked; they knew not how to forgive an injury, much less an insult; their resentments were bloody and implacable. The casual disputes that so frequently happened in their tumultuous parties of hunting or drinking, were sufficient to inflame the minds...
(And were I to go on about thoughtful war memoirs, I'd mention "Flights of Passage" by a Marine Avenger pilot and "Roll Me Over" by a GI in Huertgen Forest.
And were I to go further, I'd mention 2 WWI aviators' memoirs, "The Wind in the Wires" { -a sound effect HiTech ought to include} and "Bristol Fighter XXXX" [where the four "x's" represent digits I can't remember].)
Then. of course, there's that memoir by
T. E. Shaw
regards
