"I was very interested in the Great War, as it was called then, because it was the initial twentieth-century shock to European culture. By the time we got to the Second World War, everybody was more or less used to Europe being badly treated and people being killed in multitudes. The Great War introduced those themes to Western culture, and therefore it was an immense intellectual and cultural and social shock. Robert Sherwood, who used to write speeches for Franklin D. Roosevelt, once noted that the cynicism about the Second War began before the firing of the first shot. By that time, we didn't need to be told by people like Remarque and Siegfried Sassoon how nasty war was. We knew that already, and we just had to pursue it in a sort of controlled despair. It didn't have the ironic shock value of the Great War. And I chose to write about Britain because America was in that war a very, very little time compared to the British — just a few months, actually. The British were in it for four years, and it virtually destroyed British society."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Literary criticsHistorians from the United StatesCritics from the United StatesPeople from Los AngelesUniversity of Pennsylvania faculty
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell (22 March 1924 - 23 May 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, professor emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania, and author of books on eighteenth-century English literature, World War I, World War II, and social class.
11 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Paul Fussell →
Related Quotes
"To those on both sides who suffered."
"As a former soldier, what struck me is the absolutely heartless way that war was being pursued by the Americans, part…"
"I'm a pacifist about certain things. I'm a pacifist in the way I define national interest. I use this example frequen…"
"One of my favorite quotes is from Hemingway, who said, "Never persuade yourself that war, no matter how necessary, is…"
"[On war as ironic]: It's ironic because everybody believes that life is pleasurable, and they should. They have a rig…"
"After every war, there's an immense overhaul of language, which in the Western world has created really the cultural …"
"One thing one can't help noticing is the efficacy of religion before the nineteenth century at dealing with these pro…"
"Irony is a great help in helping to penetrate fraudulent language. In the Second War especially, the language became …"
""Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice." … They have experienced secretly and priv…"
"Most Americans, in their sweet innocence, think that class has to do with money. But a glance at Donald Trump and Leo…"