So I'm going to be teaching a class on portrayals of war in American lit, and I'm struggling with WWI and WW2 lit, and one more book dealing with the Iraq war. Any book suggestions? I'm looking to hit 10 books and so far I've got
Cold War:
John Le Carre - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
William S. Burroughs - The Naked Lunch
Vietnam War:
Michael Herr - Dispatches
Dien Cai Dau - Yusef Komunyakaa
Iraq War:
Brian Turner - Here Bullet
pls help
Band of brothers
Generation Kill for Iraq War
maybe a farewell to arms for WWI but probably not
Catch-22 for WWII.
You could teach Slaughterhouse Five as a "fun" approach to a ghastly situation (the bombing of Dresden). It's a quick read. The Short-Timers is about Vietnam
Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is about WWI but Remarque was not American. Storm of Steel is also about WWI but it's by a German
WW1:
>Johnny Got His Gun
>August 1914
>Parade’s End
>Storm of Steel
>Foodbye to All That
>All Quiet on the Western Front
WW2:
>Slaughterhouse 5
>The Thin Red Line
>From Here to Eternity
>Night
Vietnam:
>The Things They Carried
WWI
Johnny Got His Gun
WWII
The Thin Red Line
Check out Ungaretti
Ah nvm I didn't read >American lit
Maybe add If I Die In a Combat Zone by O'Brien as well. Kregg Jorgensen's Acceptable Loss isn't bad either, but is more memoir than anything else.
Why OP forgot Korea is beyond me, but Secrets of Incheon was pretty good.
Korean War doesn't seem as major as these ones
what is Naked Lunch doing on there?
>no Anton Myrer
>no Herman Wouk
It was a trial run for the policies that brought the US government into vietnam, and the implications of the war culminate today in nontrivial nuclear standoffs every other week
Naked Lunch is a meditation on paranoia and the cold war psychosis, and how the war was ultimately a war of thought and ideology
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos and One of Ours by Willa Cather. Two very different perspectives on the First World War.
For WWII, either From Here to Eternity or The Thin Red Line, and Catch-22.
For WWI, if you're willing to extend to Brit stuff, you have to include The Good Soldier. I'd say Parade's End but that'd be entirely too long. Mrs Dalloway would be fun for examining the reaction to WWI.
Johnny Got His Gun for ww1 might work.
I understand there is an aspect of it but that reading sweeps a good majority of the novel under the rug. Are there not more fitting alternatives? Don Delillo?
which delillo novel? I feel like a lot of his work touches on the cold war in some aspect
Libra, or Underworld if you can fit it.
>OP asks for books about WW1 and WW2
>people just recommending him popular novels that are set around those times that have almost nothing to do with the war at all
Once An Eagle and the War and Remembrance Duology are what you actually want OP
don't listen to fucking nonsense about Virginia Woolf, Burroughs or DeLillo being war novelists
>Books about the cultural and social desolation caused by war aren't about war
>Unironically recommending Tom Clancy tier bullshit schlock about how officers need to be honorable in order to be good officers
Banal boots on the ground war porn about troop movements and "the sacrifices of war" teach you absolutely nothing.
Mans Search For Meaning
>OP is teaching a class on portrayals of war
>you're suggesting books about desolation CAUSED by war
>OP teaching about war
>suggesting works about effects of war
>war
>effects of war
those aren't the same thing retard
not the user you're replying to but holy shit learn how to greentext
>Portraying how the ordinary person copes with their country at war in the era of Total War isn't portraying war
>Propaganda books about how great it is to be a soldier is what war is all really about
Anyway op, just give them The Good Soldier and From Here to Eternity.
I know how to green text I was just trying to infuriate the other poster as much as possible
>portraying war, soldiers, and actual combat like OP is looking for
>hurrrdurrr read naked lunch its a great war novel
I think Players is a better fit for cold war paranoia, but Libra is more directly connected.
Also OP you should have some books focused on pre-20th century wars. T. Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812 is good but maybe more academic than what you're looking for. He also has more popularly accessible books like The Rough Riders or America and the Great War. What level are you teaching?
>War in the 20th century is solely confined to soldiers
>Total war doesn't exist
>trying to broaden the definition of war until it just encompasses the entirety of the globe during wartime
The Fault in Our Stars is a masterpiece on the social desolation caused by the Iraq War
even though it's based on the conflict in afghanistan, i highly recommend sebastian junger's "war" (since you have other works of journalism on your list.)
it's one of the best portrayals on what contemporary combat is like day-to-day and the current climate of post-war life
Just to add to my points, I think that it would be nice to give your students a nice contrast between views of war before/after the 20th century. Not the simplistic "hurr durr everyone loved war until they saw it on TV in Vietnam" but a more nuanced, views of the Civil War after it happened (or during) and the horrors there. Or, after a lot of that had happened, the gung-ho nationalism of the Spanish American War. What happened between the start of that war and the start of WWI that made Americans so reluctant to go over?
Fallen Angels - Walter Dean Myers
Vietnam
A Fable by Faulkner for WW1
the ultimate question I'm trying to answer with/get out of this class is "what do we want out of war?" as an American society and also "how do we perceive war?"
have of the WWI stuff you put is not american lit, did you not read the OP?
Anyway, I recommend for WWI
Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
Three Soldiers - Dos Passos
The Enormous Room - Cummings
WWII
There are several good American poets of WWII
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
Iraq
Redeployment
The Yellow Birds