2 responses to “Episode 622: Michael Korda!”

1. 

   D J Rout

   May 2, 2024 at 3:19 am

   Thank you for posting a World War I post so close to ANZAC Day. We (Australians) may have assisted in WW2, but for the history and culture of Australia, WW1 is where we’ve looked. The sad thing is that we have replaced valour with victory—we failed to take Gallipoli from the Turks in 1915, so now we celebrate our victories. Victory is not who we are! Or at least, it isn’t who I was taught we were in school in the 1960’s.

   The main thing is that you placed this podcast about World War One right where we Australian fans would want it to be. Thank you, John. Mr Korda’s idea of following WW1 through its really needs a sequel. Did WW2 have poetry, or where the Americans in it too soon for any to start? Did a war with edited highlights shown at the cinema need poetry? Or was there a literary gap that hibernated through the 20’s to the 50’s and then awoke in time for Vietnam?

   Very well done, sir.

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   1. 

      thedrunkenodyssey

      May 7, 2024 at 11:46 am

      Hi, DJ.

      World War I was the last war of global attention in which poetry was a mainstream form of communication in the English-speaking world. By the second world war, poetry retreated to the realms of the intelligentsia and the academy. I am sure poetry exists from that time, but poetry did not make the zeitgeist. I suspect the alienation and disgust WWI created in those who served made future soldiers wary of embracing the war as a test of simple manhood and patriotism for those who were or would become writers in WWII.

      The popular novels set in WWII after the war tended to avoid jingoism and simple hero stories—and so did films. 

      The Young Lions, for example, follows 3 characters. An idealistic German soldier learns about the holocaust as German forces fell, thus learning that his country did not represent his ideals at all. The soldier is played by Marlon Brando. There is a Jewish American soldier who learns that Jews and James Joyce’s Ulysses are not welcome in the US Army. That soldier is played by Montgomery Clift. And Dean Martin plays the third protagonist, though that storyline isn’t as tense as the others, even though I always, obviously, want to see more Dean Martin.

      The literary writers who did serve would go on to write novels like Slaughterhouse Five and Catch 22. Genre writers who served would go on to write The Lord of the Rings and Starship Troopers.

      Something tells me that US soldiers who survived World War II would find the traumatic fragmentation of Modernism a bit too on the nose, especially when written by bankers and doctors and professors.

      Hemingway wrote consistently about war. He is almost an industry unto himself, or a cult, despite the fact that his writing about war is not Romantic.

      I don’t know if this responds sensibly to your response. But such are my thoughts on a Tuesday morning.

      Selah,

      J

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