Writing to forget?

Here are a few things I started to notice and tune into. Sorry for being so late!

-        The way he describes in incredible detail every event he goes through is striking. I found the first 75+ pages quite boring to be honest. Hearing about his childhood and endless lists of names I would soon forget (not only because they seemed uninteresting, but because he also in a way suggests he forgets them too) became par for the course. I zoned out at times, skipping over a paragraph or two. It wasn’t until I reached the point where he was talking about the war itself and specifically trench warfare on page 96 that I realized his style of “writing to forget” to almost let go of all of this information, like a rush of bullets whizzing over trenches, was eerily intentional. Sure, his attention to detail really gives you a feel for being in those trenches, but it gets lost in all the other things as well. I guess this made me feel like he wasn’t giving specific weight for any one topic, detail, idea, or event. Everything feels level, and that very close attention to detail, every detail, whether it’s the cracking talc on the gas mask or how to properly cross a smooth angled cliff while rock climbing, suggests no hierarchy of importance.

-        In this way I feel like the book in its entirety makes an argument against the reduction of war writing. Though we now have movies like Jarhead to show us that war isn't all about clean action gun fights and heroic rescue missions where soldiers run towards the camera with explosions to their back, maybe Graves was attempting to do the same for that time period? To say that “all that” isn't just war, but also the romanticized idea of what war is? Which is why the “boring” stuff I found in the beginning is actually be incredibly important to the project of the book: to only speak about the “fun stuff” or the nitty-gritty would be to again romanticize the experience of war and reduce it to those big budget depictions, propagating the illusion through writing.

-        I’m wondering how much his writing and persona is based on performance and how much is sincere representation. In comparison to Lifton, who I really felt was sincere with his reader, Graves almost toys with his audience, not only through the writing itself, but also in his thoughts about the book. The idea that he wrote it fast and without much critical thought interests me. Is that true? Is he performing detachment? Does he really not care about any of this and see it only as a way to make a quick buck?  Regardless of the answer, what does that mean for a reader dealing with these horrific events?

-        In chapter 13 he gives the reader unedited letters in chronological order. It’s interesting to note that there is very little if any at all, editorializing on why they are there and why the war is even being fought. It’s just accounts of death and boredom and work and the slow decay of morality. In fact, up until this point I don’t think he mentions once what the point of all this even is.

o  On page 137 he says “ the Battalion cared as little about the successes or reverses of our allows as about the origins of the War. It never allowed itself to have any political feelings about the Germans. A professional soldier’s duty was simply to fight whomever the King ordered him to fight.