# Why Were World War II Vet Writers So Cynical? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 8, 2012, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867 "2012-08-08T15:34:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bpelta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Bpelta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bpelta)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/1 "2012-08-08T15:34:40Z")
Well, perhaps cynical isn’t the best word…maybe absurdist? But they – -- I’m thinking of Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller – had a biting, sarcastic, and sometimes black sense of humor. Maybe it’s just a coincidence or maybe I’m just thinking too much of their later years…when, after all, they were all old men. Still, could be there is something there…If so, perhaps people who knew their work better than I might have some insight. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/2 "2012-08-08T16:18:45Z")
Oh boy, my chance to be both a internet literary critic _and_ armchair general! A lot of it was in reaction to US military doctrine: “clobber the enemy” American tanks were no match for German; but the US’s industrial capacity could meet German ten tanks to one. Small comfort to the Americans in those tanks. The RAF bombed Germany in the relative safety of night, while the USAF insisted on precison daylight raids: get the bombs on-target and you won’t have to go back. Again, a bleak plane ride as the sun helps the anti-aircraft gunners more than moonlight and searchlights could, as well as enemy fighters. Paul Fussell, in “Doing Battle,” relates how he as a 2nd lieutenant had to suffer General Marshall decision that, since American citizen-soldiers were so stupid, their only hope was to mass on the enemy’s flank as best as possible and just keep pushing. Very simple tactics, and one that an army as professional as the Germans could easily counter. Probably a legacy of Grant’s anti-McClellan/Pope/Hooker/Burnside/etc. attitude “enough with this complicated stuff: we’re bigger than them so let’s just beat their brains in.” Of course, imagine what Soviet authors could have written. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/3 "2012-08-08T16:26:26Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Probably a legacy of Grant’s anti-McClellan/Pope/Hooker/Burnside/etc. attitude “enough with this complicated stuff: we’re bigger than them so let’s just beat their brains in.” Compeltely incorrect characterization of Grant, and completely ignorent of Civil War history. I will fight this nonsense till the sun dies, and then fight in the cold and dark. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/4 "2012-08-08T16:35:37Z")
Well, what did _they_ say on the topic? > [@](#): > > “You were just babies then!” she said. > > “What?” I said. > > “You were just babies in the war — like the ones upstairs!” > > I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood. > > “But you’re not going to write it that way, are you.” This wasn’t a question. It was an accusation. > > “I — I don’t know,” I said. > > “Well I know,” she said. “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them. And they’ll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.” > > So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn’t want her babies or anybody else’s babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. > > So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: > > “Mary,” I said, "I don’t think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won’t be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. > > “I tell you what,” I said, “I’ll call it The Children’s Crusade.” > > She was my friend after that. and > [@](#): > > It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. > And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?” Kurt Vonnegut, _Slaughterhouse Five_ ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/5 "2012-08-08T16:56:34Z")
True, but then all wars are baby-grinders. However, as far as producing a literary genre “boy was that stupid, what the fuck was that all about anyway?” While post-WWI British literature is rich with this, in the US it was only served by John Dos Pasos (even though the US’s involvement in WWI was even more cynical, authoritarian and inept than it would be in WWII, Japanese-American internment notwithstanding) This same genre had one major participant after the US Civil War: Ambrose Bierce. What the OP asks is why it was such a hit post WWII. I’d say it was because the authors the OP cites sere products of the Leftism of the Great Depression during their impressionable youths, and then after the war they reacted to how big government and big business decided to capitalize on victory by still treating its former citizen-soldiers as cogs in their great big machine. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/6 "2012-08-08T17:21:11Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > What the OP asks is why it was such a hit post WWII. I’d say it was because the authors the OP cites sere products of the Leftism of the Great Depression during their impressionable youths, and then after the war they reacted to how big government and big business decided to capitalize on victory by still treating its former citizen-soldiers as cogs in their great big machine. This sounds right. I’d call it the contrast between reality and publicly exalted ideals. Certainly makes me cynical. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/7 "2012-08-08T17:40:56Z")
> [@Bpelta](#): > > Well, perhaps cynical isn’t the best word…maybe absurdist? But they – – I’m thinking of Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller – had a biting, sarcastic, and sometimes black sense of humor. Part of the problem is that you’re cherrypicking from all the books and all the decades to compile a list of four writers, one of whom, Vidal, never wrote a WWII book. (You list Joseph Heller twice.) Here are all the actual bestsellers about the war that appeared from 1947 to 1956. (Defined as: made the top ten list for the year as given by Alice Payne Hackett, 70 Years of Best Sellers 1895-1965.) The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer The Young Lions, Irwin Shaw Into the Trees, John Hersey From Here to Eternity, James Jones The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat Return to Paradise, James Michener (sequel to Tales of the South Pacific) Battle Cry, Leon Uris The High and the Mighty, Ernest K. Gann No Time for Sergeants, Mac Hyman Don’t Go Near the Water, William Brinkley That paints a wholly different picture of what books were like on the war. Some were cynical, some were heroic, some were flat-out comic. Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse 5 appeared in the 1960s. (Catch-22 was not a hardback bestseller either. It didn’t become wildly popular until it appeared in paperback.) By then, the culture had changed. Cynicism, especially as a reaction to the conformist 50’s, was appearing over all the arts. It didn’t really matter whether the authors were WWII vets or not. If you look at contemporaries of Heller and Vonnegut, ones who wrote with similar styles and are usually mentioned in the same sentence with them, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover all managed not to serve in WWII. Truman Capote never served in the war. Saul Bellow did, though he wrote in a completely different idiom. Salinger did but wrote one of the early Holden Caulfield stories before being drafted. I’d say you could make any case you wanted about authors by picking the right selection of them. It sure didn’t take WWII to invent cynicism or hated of war or contempt for bureaucracy. Not to mention that you could make the 60s look more conservative than the 50s by picking the right sets of authors. The real moral is to beware of categorizing periods of time. It’s hard to make that stick when you take a closer look. ---
**Author:** ![SeldomSeen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/8 "2012-08-08T18:29:55Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > This same genre had one major participant after the US Civil War: Ambrose Bierce. Two. Stephan Crane. SS ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/9 "2012-08-08T19:15:05Z")
Crane wasn’t a CW vet, per the OP. But Naturalism probably wouldn’t have been as morose and morbid as it was if there hadn’t been as many widows and amputees around during its era. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/10 "2012-08-08T21:12:02Z")
[nitpick] IIRC, Gore Vidal’s first novel, _Williwaw_, was related to his wartime service in the Aleutians. However, I don’t think any combat occurred in the book.[/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/11 "2012-08-08T21:30:38Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Paul Fussell, in “Doing Battle,” relates how he as a 2nd lieutenant had to suffer General Marshall decision that, since American citizen-soldiers were so stupid, their only hope was to mass on the enemy’s flank as best as possible and just keep pushing. Very simple tactics, and one that an army as professional as the Germans could easily counter. > > Probably a legacy of Grant’s anti-McClellan/Pope/Hooker/Burnside/etc. attitude “enough with this complicated stuff: we’re bigger than them so let’s just beat their brains in.” > > Of course, imagine what Soviet authors could have written. Well, yeah. Or the German authors. Or anyone. This is a preposterous mischaracterization of American doctrine in World War II (or for that matter the Civil War and U.S. Grant, the greatest general in American history and a strategic genius of the first order.) The reason people came back cynical and jaded is that they’d just been to the SECOND WORLD WAR. It was the industrialization of murder on an incomprehensible scale, slaughter and death the likes of which could not be fully accepted by a sane person. People who saw the aftermath of the Battle of the Falaise Gap said you could walk a hundred yards stepping on parts of dead Germans the entire way, never touching the ground with your feet. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/12 "2012-08-09T07:04:12Z")
The most optimistic vet account I read was “No Surrender” that detailed Lt. Hiroo Onoda’s 30-year war in the Philippines. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/13 "2012-08-09T07:39:28Z")
“Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller” These two WW I veterans would blow the above list: Ernest Hemingway Adolf Hitler ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/14 "2012-08-09T07:52:14Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > “Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller” > > These two WW I veterans **would blow** the above list: > . . . > > Adolf Hitler As much as Gore Vidal would have appreciated it, the Fuhrer wasn’t a mousy little mama’s boy! The Fuhrer was BUTCH! ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/15 "2012-08-09T12:23:51Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > (You list Joseph Heller twice.) I like Joseph Heller. ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/16 "2012-08-09T15:14:37Z")
Gore Vidal lost his boyfriend (his first, I think) to combat in WWII. Forever after he didn’t seem to have anything positive to say about war. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/17 "2012-08-09T17:20:43Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Here are all the actual bestsellers about the war that appeared from 1947 to 1956. > > … > > From Here to Eternity, James Jones > > … > > Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse 5 appeared in the 1960s. Note too that in the excerpt from _S5_ quoted above, Vonnegut is expressly mocking _FHTE_. His book isn’t just about the war; it’s also a reaction to earlier books about the war. > [@RickJay](#): > > The reason people came back cynical and jaded is that they’d just been to the SECOND WORLD WAR. Also, they were part of a culture whose ideals of masculinity prized toughness and stoicism and left men little room for talking about weakness or negative feelings. Cynicism and bitterness were the closest one could come to giving voice to emotional damage. Look again at the Vonnegut excerpt above, how the notion that soldiers are “babies” harmed by war has to come from a female character. ---
**Author:** ![AdmiralCrunch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6f9a4e/32.png) [@AdmiralCrunch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AdmiralCrunch)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/18 "2012-08-09T17:32:38Z")
Paul Fussell’s the point man for this. [This is a good start](http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/bookauth/battle/fussell.htm), an essay on the war’s legacy 50 years out. The Great War and Modern Memory is particularly excellent and contrasts the literature of WWI and WWII at length. > [@](#): > > WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE SECOND WORLD War that moved the troops to constant verbal subversion and contempt? > … > > It was not just the danger and fear, the boredom and uncertainty and loneliness and deprivation. It was the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experience so falsely that it would never be readily communicable. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/19 "2012-08-09T17:38:45Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Note too that in the excerpt from _S5_ quoted above, Vonnegut is expressly mocking _FHTE_. His book isn’t just about the war; it’s also a reaction to earlier books about the war. I’ve read most of James Jones’ war writing: _From Here to Eternity. The Thin Red Line, Whistle_, and the short stories, and I don’t recall any of it glorifying war as a chest-thumping, dramaturgic proving ground for ones manhood. Disgusting, brutalizing and terrifying. In the movie version of The **Thin Red Line** , you may remember Sean Penn’s character bitching “property, property!” In the book his point was that war and army life in general could bring out ones inner Bolshevik ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867/20 "2012-08-09T17:50:29Z")
Does this only apply to literature since in movies (at least until recently) and books like those by Stephen Ambrose, WWII is definitely portrayed as a “good war” and its soldiers as part of the “Greatest Generation”. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-world-war-ii-vet-writers-so-cynical/630867.md?page=2)