Books: Naming the Unnameable

THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY

by PAUL FUSSELL 363 pages. Oxford. $13.95.

Everyone knows war changes culture; but it is hard to say how, since war is culture. From the mid-'30s, war has been so continuous and "normal" a state of society that we find it awkward, even impossible, to detach it from our unconscious assumptions about literature and its workings. Hence the value of this extraordinary and moving book by Paul Fussell, a Rutgers University professor. There is, he argues, a peculiarly modern consciousness of war. It began in the trenches of France...

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