The Faulkner Society selected The Literature of War & Collateral Damage as its theme for Words & Music, 2010 for good reasons. 

First, the best of war-related literature makes for wonderful reading experiences by a broad-based audience of educated adult readers.  A great war novel has something for everyone: history, exciting backdrops, romance, philosophy, and characters of universal appeal.  And having the authors or experts on the work of various authors discuss the books in person adds to the joy of reading good literature.

Second, one good novel with war as a backdrop seems to lead naturally into another set in the same period, even if the setting is a new one, which extends the pleasure and enlightenment of reading about a specific era in work by different authors.

Third, the great war novels and first class non-fiction relating to war provide philosophical concepts, psychological concepts, historical research, and storytelling techniques that can be useful for writers developing manuscripts of their own. The best war novels are terrific models for writers seeking to perfect their own work. 

Finally, only by reading about the sad mistakes of the past, can we hope to avoid similar mistakes in national judgement in the future.

Joined by my husband and Faulkner Society co-founder, I have been reading—or, in some cases, re-reading—the books described below in preparation for Words & Music, 2010.  My favorite war novelsince high school has been Tolstoy’s War & Peace. It has been a constant companion for me during illnesses over the years. Although I have not enjoyed the recurring walking pneumonia I have suffered since Words & Music, 2009, the one good thing to come out of all the down time has been the opportunity to re-read War & Peace and compare it to the others. War & Peace now has fierce competitors for my literary affection! I strongly recommend all of these books for your personal libraries, whether you are a writer or an avid reader or both.

—Rosemary James, Co-Founder, Faulkner Society

NON-FICTION

A Terrible Love of War, James Hillman, Ph.D.
Trade Paperback, $16.00
Dr. Hillman is among the best known of Jungian psychologists. His thesis for the book is that  war is in our DNA and that there is really no such thing as “peace,” only periods of rest before the inevitable next war. Hillman’s thesis is credible and provides insight for the serious reader or writer seeking to understand the war drive in us.

The Battle of Marathon by Peter Krentz
Hard Copy, $27.50
Long before the word marathon became today’s descriptive term for a long and demanding foot race, it was the Battle of Marathon, the pivotal battle that changed Greek military history 2,500 years ago.  It is the story of how the city state of Athens changed warfare tactics to defeat the invaders from Persia, the first world empire. Many historians and clever scholars have tried to refute the ancient account of the battle by Herodotus.  Krentz, the Grey Professor of the Classics and History at Davidson College, Krentz goes against the naysayers and demonstrates articulately and very satisfactorily that Herodotus was correct in his account of how the Greeks won the day. An important book for understanding ancient history. Issued by Yale University Press as part of  the Yale Library of Military History, The Battle of Marathon has an interesting foreword by Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History, Yale University, and Dennis Showalter, Professor of History at Colorado College, editors of the series.

NARRATIVE POETRY & FICTION

Odyssey by Homer, translated by Dr. Stanley Lombardo
Trade Paperback, $15.00
Iliad by Homer, translated by Dr. Stanley Lombardo
Trade Paperback, $14.00
"'This is wonderful, to listen to a singer …Such as this. . . “ Odysseus says of the bard Demodocus. And Stanley Lombardo embodies the singer, the oral poet, the aoidos, in his translations from Homer. With a line and a language hammered out “in public performance,” his translations can move the reader or an audience for one of his performances to tears and to laughter.  His translations are faithful to the ancient Greek, with startling simplicity, spare syntax, and possibly the highest proportion of short words in modern English poetry. His translations offer sudden and direct contact with the subject matter. No version of the Odyssey is more immediate. No version shows better one of Homer's essentials: the oral poet at work. Lombardo is first an oral storyteller of exciting range and his special genius is for translating the ancient Greek so that you feel you are listening to a brilliant performer while you are reading the text. For more on Stanley Lombardo and his work, Click Here!

Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Dr. Stanley Lombardo
Trade Paperback, $16.00.

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, Translated by Richard Pevean and Larissa Volokhonsky
$50,  Hard Copy (Out of Print but limited quantity available).
War and Peace, Leo Tolstory, Translated by Andrew Bromfield
$39, Hard Copy,
The classic novel of war and collateral damage is must reading for all who would understand the disruption of Society when war becomes inevitable in the face of power grabs by ego-driven, Empire-building military leaders, such as Napoleon. The characters of this novel are among the most memorable of Western literary history and Tolstoy, a genius in many aspects, also had a special gift for putting the reader squarely in the places of
this compelling story.

The Black Flower, The Year of Jubilo, and The Judas Field by Howard Bahr
Trade Paperback, $15.00, $15.00, and $14.00
These exceptional Civil War novels, New York Times Notable Books, set in Tennessee and Mississippi deal with the dehumanizing effects of war on
combatants and on the Society of the South. For more on these novels and their author, Click Here!

Morkan’s Quarry by Steve Yates
Hard Copy, $20
This début novel of the Civil War is set in a part of the country that is little known to most readers, the small towns of the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks.  The story opens in 1861 when citizens of these isolated towns for the most part want nothing to do with
this war not of their making.  It is a compelling story of memorable men and womenbrought to life with clear prose, a remarkable sense of time and place, and their loyalty to place before cause. For more on Steve Yates and his novel, Click Here!

Soldiers’ Pay, first novel by William Faulkner
Trade Paperback, $13.95
Faulkner, who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature and many other honors for his impressive body of work, wrote the book while living on Pirate’s Alley in New Orleans in 1925.  Set in the aftermath of WWI, it is the story of the anxiety of returning home and trying to fit into American society after the horrors of war. It is the first American novel to deal creatively with what is now known as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome among veterans.

Birdsong by bestselling British novelist Sebastian Faulks.
Trade Paperback, $15.95
The fear and loathesome conditions soldiers faced in World War I’s trench warfare and an unusual romance in the intervals of respite from the trenches is told in prose of luminous clarity, making this book an unforgettable war classic. One of my favorites, along with another Faulks war novel, The Girl at the Lion d’Or.

Atonement by bestselling British novelist Ian McEwen
Hard Copy, Deckle Edge,  $30
Fledgling writer Briony Tallis, a privileged English teenager, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she jumps to the wrong conclusion about something she has seen and accuses her older sister's lover—the son of a servant on the family estate—of a crime he did not commit. Then, she spends the rest of her life atoning for her mistake. At its core Atonement is the story of how English Society was forever changed by the war that was supposed to end all wars and the refusal of older members of the English upper classes to accept that class barriers as they had known them were disappearing for the younger generation. The devastating withdrawal by the British at Dunkirk is retold from the perspective of the wrongly accused young man, who is released from prison in return for war service.

The Glass Room by bestselling British novelist Simon Mawer
Trade Paperback, $14.95
Set primarily in Czechoslovakia, the story begins during the period of exuberant hope and the blaze of creativity that began after WWI.  It is the story of an architectural work of art, based on a real Mies van der Rohe landmark, Villa Tugenhadt, that symbolizes faith in the future. And it is a story, first, of the young married couple who commission the residence and, then. of all who are touched by it. The story takes the family who commissioned the villa through their escape from the Nazis to a new life in America and finally back to Czechoslovkia. And it is the story of how the hopes and desires of an entire generation are crushed by Hitler’s rise to power and his demonic determination to exterminate Jews.  The novel is shortlisted for the Booker Prize. For more on Simon Mawer and his work, Click Here!

The Empire Triology, by the late J. G. Farrell
Trade Paperback,$15.95, $16.95, and $17.95
Three novels dealing with the break-up of the British Empire by the late J. G. Farrell—a British fiction writer of mixed Anglo-Irish parentage and extraordinary insight and storytelling power—have been reissued recently by the New York Review of Books.  All three novels won the prestigious British Booker Prize. Finding Farrell is like finding a lost treasure cache. In these three novels, every page is the work of a remarkable stylist, informed and sensitive, yet satirical.  He wrote about the Empire back in the 1970s with scathing disdain for the British political system at a time when the Brits did not want to think about either the loss of Empire or the uglier side of their Empire’s history.  There are no so-so passages to skim quickly in his work.  Every page has the mark of genius—sparkling prose, quiet little surprises, and a marvelous sense of humor. 

The Empire Trilogy novels are:

The Siege of Krishnapur, which is introduced by Pankaj Mishra, author of The Romantics and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement, is widely considered among the finest British novels published in the latter half of 20^th century. The scene is India, 1857, the year of the Great Mutiny, in an isolated Victorian outpost, a time when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebillion on their British overlords.  In spite of rumors of strife from afar, British citizens of the colonial community remain arrogantly assured of their military and moral superiority until they are under attack and the brutal, blundering character of dominion is revealed. While each book of the trilogy can read alone and enjoyed tremendously without ever picking up another of the group, if you plan to read all three novels, for chronological reasons, read The Siege of Krishnapur first, even though it was created by Farrell after Troubles.  

Troubles, which is introduced by contemporary Irish fiction master, John Banville, a winner of the Booker Prize, whose most recent novel is Infinities, a charming story of how the Gods of the ancients play with our lives and turn them topsy turvy.  No examination of war is complete without reading great literature inspired by tIrish civil war and this novel uses the disintegration of the fortunes of an Anglo-Irish family and friends as a focal point for the disintegration of the British Empire—a story of personal fortunes set against the backdrop of the mounting violence of the “troubles” and the Easter, 1916, rebellion, the unrest caused by the partition of Ireland and the unrest in other British colonies, India and Singapore, for instance. 

The Singapore Grip, which is introduced by celebrated Irish poet Derek Mahon, whose books of poetry include Collected Poems and Harbour Lights.  Set in Singapore in 1939 on the Eve of World War II, the novel focuses on the world of Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore’s oldest and most powerful firm. Although business is booming, Blackett sees his personal world falling apart, a symbol of the fact that the fixed boundaries of the British Empire between classes and nations, the ordered world of  Empire are coming to a terrible end.

These three novels combined are a richly imagined story of the absurdities and splendours of Empire and the melancholy end to it all.  Read in tandem with Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilolgy, the historical perspective is broadened and the reader’s understanding of modern history is enriched. Reading about how Farrell came to create these novels, his inspiration, would be helpful to writers, I believe. To learn more about Farrell, who produced literary masterpieces in his short life of 44 years, read J. G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer by Lavinia Greacen, published in 1999 by Bloomsbury.

Fortunes of War:

A saga by British Novelist Olivia Manning in six novels centered on a group of refugees of assorted nationality bound together by the fortunes of war in two trilogies narrated by a displaced British woman, Harriet, thrown into her situation by marriage to Guy Pringle, a man so in love with ideas that he is careless of Harriet and her emotional needs as a newlywed in a strange environment, frightened by the spread of Nazi influence and troops. Ms. Manning places the reader squarely at the juxtaposition between advancing military brigades and a civilian population of both native-born citizens of, first Rumania, then Greece, then
Egypt and ex-patriots trying to get back home. The long, circuitous route they take is a classic story of the collateral damage
war inflicts on ordinary men and women and an excellent portrayal of the breakdown of Society in the day to day struggle to
escape and to find food.



The Balkan Trilogy by the late British author Olivia Manning, reissued recently by the book publishing arm of the New York Review of Books.
Trade paperback, $22.95 (Edition Contains: The Great Fortune, The Spoilt City, and Friends and Heroes)
Based on Ms. Manning's own experiences as a refugee during WW WAR II, the trilogy is set primarily in Rumania and Greece during the period of Hitler’s rise to power and spreading menace. Ms. Manning’s story is a memorable portrayal of how non-combatantshave their lives, their careers, their hopes for the future, their marriages, and even their morality destroyed by war-mongers and those who cave in to them. Ms. Manning’s characters completely wrap the reader up in their lives, even though they rarely exhibit admirable qualities, so caught up are they in their individual plights, trappe away from home as Hitler’s troops advance. Prince Yakimov, a Russian-Irish Brit, who is an inveterate mooch and instinctive survivor is an example. The self-pitying Yakimov brings both humor and pathos to the saga  Wonderful observations about war and humans under stress are to be found here. Pondering her status as a refugee in Greece--a place that she is quite taken with, but cannot really enjoy--Harriet Pringle, the narrator, concludes that "War meant a perpetual postponement of life... " as well as ongoing near-starvation and fear. Manning documents these realities brilliantly throughout the three novels.

The Levant Trilogy by the late British author Olivia Manning
Trade Paperback, $22.95 
(Edition contains all three novels, The Danger Tree, The Battle Lost and Won, and The Sum of Things)
As Rommel advances in war-torn Egypt, the lives of the civilian population come under threat. One such couple, Guy and Harriet Pringle (also the primary characters in The Balkan Trilogy), have escaped the war in Europe only to find the conflict once more on their doorstep, providing a volatile backdrop to their own personal battles. The civilian world meets the military through the figure of Simon Boulderstone, a young army officer who will witness the tragedy and tension of war on the frontier at first hand. An outstanding author of wartime fiction, Olivia Manning brilliantly evokes here the world of the Levant - Egypt, Jerusalem and Syria - with perception and subtlety, humour and humanity.

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst
Hard Copy, $26.00
Alan Furst is the acknowledged master of the literary historical spy novel and this one is an excellent novel to read in tandem with Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy.  I read the Trilogy first and felt when reading the Furst novel that a new set of characters had been added to the Trilogy, so marvelously similar are the circumstances and landscapes.  This novel is set in the Balkan part of Greece in Salonika,  In the last book of the Trilogy, the characters fled Rumania and ended up in Athens. At the end of both books, most of the characters of are leaving Greece aboard ships headed for the Levant, once again fleeing invading Nazis, able to salvage nothing but their lives.

The Information Officer by British novelist Mark Miles.
Hard Copy, $25
A compelling story of intrigue among British and American intelligence officers in Malta with World War II looming.  Characters and sense of place are important elements of this book, which also is just a good, old-fashioned, educated spy novel. 

History: a Novel by Elsa Morante
Trade Paperback, $24.95
Frequently described as the best war novel ever written, this book is by one of Italy’s most revered authors, the late Elsa Morante, who married prominent author Alberto Moravia, an outspoken opponent of Mussolini’s Facist government.  They were forced to go into hiding until the Liberation.  History was written nearly three decades after their forced exile in the remote villages of the mountains south of Rome.  The story begins
in 1941 when the heroine, Ida Mancuso, who is half Jewish, is raped by a drunken German soldier wandering the streets of Rome in search of sex.  She is left pregnant with a boy whose survival becomes her passion.  This is an unforgettable universal drama of ordinary people struggling for life and bread during war.

Hunger by Elise Blackwell.
Trade Paperback, $11.95
This is a tale of ordinary people caught up in the extreme circumstances of war and slow starvation during the siege of Leningrad in World War II. Reminiscent of Ann Patchett's  Bel Canto, Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, and Wladyslaw Szpilman's The Pianist, this début novel by Louisiana native Elise Blackwell is a feat of imaginative storytelling—a novel which immerses the reader in passion and romance while putting a human face on some of the darkest hours of the 20th Century's. The narrator is an old Russian émigré, who is remembering his life as a botanist before and during the war, when he and his colleagues worked to save the city’s collection of rare botanical species. Although he loves his wife, another botanist, the narrator nevertheless engages in two simultaneous extramarital affairs, both of which become complicated as the siege continues and Leningrad’s citizens begin to starve. This book is high recommended for its luscious descriptions of food, exotic foods the narrator enjoyed before the war and longingdescriptions of plain, totally delightful comfort food, such as “one fat perfect potato in salted water.” Her new novel, An Unfinished Score, Elise turns her exceptional descriptive powers to a story revolving around love of music. For more on Elise Blackwell and her work, Click Here!

The Violin of Auschwitz by Maria Àngels Anglada. translated by Martha Tennent
Hard Copy, $20
This is a magnificent story of the transcendant power art during the dehumanizing trauma of the Holocaust.

No Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada
Trade Paperback, $27.00
Because of the Holocaust and other horrors visited upon humanity by Hitler and the Nazis, many of us tend to forget that the Hitler regime was a horrible period for ordinary, normally non-political non-Jewish Germans as well.  This story, which is considered by many literary scholars and historians to be the best novel about Germany during World War II written by a German, is about the quiet heroism of a German working man and wife who stage an unusual resistance and become a thorn in the side of the German authorities. The classic, reissued early in 2010, was written in 45 days after Fallada was released from a German prison liberated by the allies. 

My Bright Midnight by Josh Russell
Trade Paperback, $18.95Russell, received his MFA from LSU and taught there, became entranced with various aspects of the history of New Orleans while living in Louisiana.  His new novel is about how World War II wrecks the life of a New Orleanian of German extraction.  Russell has captured WWII New Orleans in sparkling prose. For more on Russell and his new novel, Click Here!

Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
Trade Paperback, $16This poignant story of a woman who must choose which of her children is to die in a Nazi death camp is still my choice, if one can choose but one among the many fine works of fiction about the Holocaust.

The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps by William Styron
Hard Copy, $24.00; Trade Paperback,The Pulitzer Prize winner was working on this collection of short fiction based on his personal experiences as a member of the U. S. Marine Corps during World War II when he got the idea for his novel Sophie’s Choice.  The collection has just been issued. William Styron was among our favorite guests at the Faulkner House.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carré
Hard Copy, $22.00
A classic novel of the Cold War, Le Carré’s characters, such as the spymaster Smiley, are his gift to literature. To understand narrator and character development, this book is a great beginning point for writers.  It is also the best spy novel ever written, a joy for the reader.

The Untouchable by John Banville
Trade Paperback, $15.00
In the current rage for memoir and personal adventure stories, it is easy to forget that masterful fiction, is often the quickest route to the truth. A large-scale masterpiece, The Untouchable, drives that fact home. This brilliant, satisfying novel based on fact demonstrates that fiction is much more truthful in the matter of life and death than any celebrity tells-all tale or hokey reality show.  Banville found his ideal story in this novel, one that matches his singular obsessions to the narrative voice mastered in his previous novels. The Untouchable should not be read as just another book about the Cambridge spies, even though the narrator bears much more than passing resemblance to Anthony Blunt, the British art historian and scholar of Poussin who was ousted by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 as one of the circle of Russian spies that included Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, John Cairncross, and Donald MacLean. Exploiting historical record, Banville added yet another level of allusiveness and playfully fascinating head games. The espionage novel, the progeny of Conrad, always draw on historical forces to power its readers through labyrinthine, often downright obfuscatory, plots. This historical grounding and the discipline of plot, combined with Banville’s prodigious stylistic mastery, make it impossible to dismiss The Untouchable as just another spy novel. Banville's lyrical, erudite prose—which comes to us through the medium of the slightly flawed protagonist, Victor Maskell— is transporting, Yeatsean in its reveries. Giving us a sense of the time and place created by Empire and the Cold War, Banville firmly places the reader inside Maskell's mind and heart, giving usinsights into the kaleidoscopic, shape-shifting nature of life, love and identity.  As for the spy elements, they are props, as is the business of Maskell’s homosexuality, important only as a setting for getting at the truth. Banville leads the reader to the realization that whether one is homo or hetero, spy or patriot—Maskell is, at times, all four—we all are out of our depths in today’s world in defining who we are and why we do things. To quote from the book: "Yes, how deceptively light they are, the truly decisive steps in life we take."

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, winner of The National Book Award
Trade Paperback, $14.95
A profoundly moving masterpiece, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is one of the best examples I know of for getting at the truth through fiction.  Although it is much more powerful than the usual book of war fiction, possibly it is because of its unique format, transcends the fiction genre generally. While it is described for niche marketing. as "a work of fiction" on the title page, it combines aspects of the memoir, novel, and short story collection formats, a highly organic and creative format. The first-person narrator has the same name as the author, Tim O'Brien, and is a writer and combat veteran of the Vietnam War. The book not only focuses on events of this terrible war but those leading up to it and in the aftermath.  It covers some 30 years in the lives of O'Brien and his fellow soldiers. Just as visual art is some times referred to as “painterly,” this book can be described as “writerly.” With reflections by O’Brien and the other characters on the storytelling process, the reader is invited into the process, a brilliant technique.As with any realistic war story, there are nightmarish graphic and violent moments, interspersed, however, with humor and irony and the surreal. O'Brien’s band of soldiers is unforgettable, including the guilt-ridden Lieutenant Cross; the devout Bible-carrying Baptist Kiowa, a Native American; and Azar, who is cynical and sadistic and at same time playful.  Their stories each can stand alone beautifully as short fiction but presented in tandem form a complete work of literary art. For more on Time O'Brien and his work, Click Here!

The Names of the Dead by Stewart O’Nan.
Out of Print, Signed Hard Copy, $44.
Paperback, $10


Stewart O’Nan’s principal character, Vietnam veteran Larry Markham, is the focus of two plots in two time periods, his wartime experiences told in lengthy flashbacks, and the life he endures 20 years later, with memories, war souvenirs, and a mysterious stalker linking the present with the past. O’Nan’s theme is evident from the start and is repeatedly reinforced throughout his interwoven stories—the lives of Vietnam war veterans are defined by their war years and resolution to their traumas is only possible by, symbolically, bringing home all those who died in that deplorable chapter in American military history. The Names of the Dead is generally considered one of the best novels written about the Vietnam War, a remarkable achievment on O'Nan's part, considereing especially the fact that he was a child at the time the conflict was raging. For more on Stewart O'Nan and his work, Click Here.

For a list of books on other subjects to be discussed during Words & Music, Click Here!

BOOK PURCHASES THROUGH FAULKNER SOCIETY

ARE DISCOUNTED

To make acquisition of these books more affordable, copies are offered to our members and to those registering for Words & Music at a 10 per cent discount when ordered through us. The discount will also be offered for books purchased at our Book Martduring Words & Music.

For an order form, Click Here!

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