The Vintage Book of War Stories

I was familiar with some of these texts - Celine's briliant 'Journey to the End of the Night' (Kurt Vonnegut's piece on him in 'Palm Sunday' contextualises his brilliant-art against his dubious life), 'All Quiet on the Western Front', the great excerpt from 'A Very Long Engagement' (while not a bad film, much more satisfying book), 'The Thin Red Line', Vonnegut's Dresden-piece from 'Palm Sunday' (which probably ought to be included in the next reprint of 'Slaughterhouse-Five'), 'The English Patient', 'The Naked and the Dead' and Fowles' 'The Magus' - whose excerpt here alongside Shusaku Endo's 'We Are About to Kill a Man' is as bleak as it gets (though 'The Magus' excerpt coming after the 'Captain Corelli' piece confuses the fact the latter was heavily influenced by the former!).

There is a rich wealth of voices here, from Elizabeth Bowen's London-piece to Joseph Heller's 'Catch 22'-related memoir, to writers on more recent wars such as Tim O'Brien (here we get 'How To Tell a True War Story', which makes a change from the over-anthologised 'The Things They Carried'), Philip Caputo, Christopher J. Koch & Bao Ninh. 'The Vintage Book of War Stories' is ideal to dip in and out of and serves as a great stand-alone work and a handy reference point for further reading (I purchased several of the budget-priced Vintage series this comes in, re-reading Remarque's most famous work, the previously unfamiliar 'The Dark Room' (which appeals after watching 'Heimat')& 'The Sorrow of War' - which presents the Vietnam War from the unfamiliar Vietnamese perspective rather than the overfamiliar American one...

War has never really gone away, though we in the West have convientienly forgotten things, out of historical-ignorance or Real Politik, or political-fluidity - the last few years war has been with us, albeit in controlled-media bursts. This book, as many others on war, reminds us of the sacrfices that are made - though wasn't the Great War meant to be the last one? War is essentially a crap idea and one that seems to have become close to a movie-wet dream in recent culture - Steven Spielberg's embrassassing 'Band of Brothers'/'Saving Private Ryan' or the speeches given by the chickenhawk leader of the free world in front of military audiences. People seem to have forgotten, and to be fair, when the Cold War ended in 1989-1990, everyone felt much safer and forgot about the Kurds, the invasion of Panama, the West-sponsored Mujahadeen, and the Balkans Conflict (the latter was hardly dealt with by the West- reading 'Freedom' here you think of Srebrenica). The arms trade perpetuates and people are at war, as histories are rewritten and ignored. 'The Vintage Book of War Stories' reminds us of the human lives under war, a subject that has resonated since Homer, but now just seems decadent following the enlightment and the decline of empire. This book should be taught in schools - forget citizenship-classes or other bunk - the works collected here show us a way into history and the subject of war. A subject that won't go away then...