Distant War Research Articles

Josef Kavalier's <I>Odyssey</I>: Epic Echoes in Chabon's <I>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay</I>

Josef Kavalier’s Odyssey: Epic Echoes in Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay This paper shows that the numerous parallels between Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Chabon 2000) and the Odyssey reveal the novelist’s attempt to portray his hero as a Jewish Odysseus. Although thus far unexplored by scholars, I illustrate how Chabon’s work contains episodes, structures and characters that correspond to many Odyssean exemplars, including the Telemachia (Od. 1-4), Cyclopeia (Od. 9), Nekuia (Od. 11), Anagnorismos (Od. 16), and Toxou Thesis / Mnesetrophonia (Od. 21-22), as well as themes such as the “Wrath of Poseidon,” and the “Tempted but Faithful and Talented Wife.” Chabon himself invites a study of this sort, having written recently that the Odyssey and its hero form the original paradigm of the “Adventure Story” – especially for his Jewish characters (Chabon 2007, 201-203). With World War II as its centerpiece, Chabon tells the story of young Josef Kavalier’s escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, his friendship and comic book collaboration with his cousin Sam Klayman, his enlistment and service in the War, subsequent disappearance, and dramatic return. Like Odysseus, Joe Kavalier is a man of many talents and a master of escape; he leaves his woman and son for a distant war, leaving behind a mentor who cares for his son. Like Odysseus in the Cyclopeia, Kavalier loses fellow soldiers to death in a cave, from which he himself escapes while clinging to a shaggy animal. In a scene parallel to the Nekuia, he visits the dead, where he reaches out to his unburied family, and encounters the spirit of a wise old man, who directs him homeward. Disaster at sea deprives him of a loved one. The plots of his pro-Nazi nemesis Carl Ebling recall Poseidon’s wrath at Odysseus (particularly when Ebling attacks Kavalier with a homemade bomb hidden in a decorative trident at a Neptune-themed bar mitzvah party). Both absent heroes lose their mothers to death. Each longs to return to his woman, who shares many of his own talents. Their families assume that they have been lost at sea. Both men mourn the death of a beloved and loyal dog. They return home having lost all of their companions, and having created an artistic account of their own stories (cf. Apologoi [Od. 9-12]). So too, both Joe and Odysseus return in disguise, alone, but in possession of great hidden wealth. Both stories contain a Telemachia, in which the sons seeking their fathers discover a new “shiny” world. Both men identify themselves to their sons in the workplace of an old man and plan their final homecomings in league with their sons – with whom each has secret meetings and communications. Their wives suffer the pressures of remaining chaste, and undergo unaccustomed cosmetic treatments to increase their attractiveness to other men – while simultaneously remaining faithful to their own. Each woman hesitates to accept fully her returning husband at first, but eventually does so heartily. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a robust continuation of the classical tradition: a polytropic man’s epic nostos, built upon the quintessential Homeric adventure story. It is part of what Chabon elsewhere calls the “five-thousand-year Odyssey” of the Jewish people (Chabon 2007, 203).Chabon, Michael. 2000. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. New York.Chabon, Michael. 2007. Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure. New York.

Casualty Reporting and Domestic Support for War: The US Experience during the Korean War

The common argument that public support for war is casualty sensitive ignores the fact that casualty figures are not revealed automatically. While the military decides when, and to whom, to release such information, political elites can question, even condemn, how the government goes about this business. After briefly exploring how the US military operated during the two world wars, this article focuses on American casualty reporting during the Korean War, arguing that the way the figures were revealed often sparked enormous political controversy, which at two crucial moments helped to undermine domestic support for this distant war.

‘Come on back to the war’: Germany as the Other National Other in Canadian Popular Culture

This essay argues for bringing the methodology of post-colonial studies to bear on mainstream Canadian popular culture, towards a rethinking of Canada's ideological affinities with nations traditionally considered as Canada's ‘Others,’ the United Kingdom and the United States, through the mobilizations of popular culture for militarized nation-building. This argument identifies Germany's role in popular Canadian literature as a recurring national ‘Other’ against which Canadian nationalism develops, sensitized to the discourse of national security. Representations of Germany as a chronotope of distant war and natural evil recur among some of the most internationally famous works of Canadian literature. Those read here include Anne of Green Gables, ‘In Flanders Fields,’ Never Cry Wolf, The Handmaid's Tale, the oeuvre of Leonard Cohen, and Neuromancer. The essay concludes with thoughts on the ironies and implications of transnational stereotype and state policy in the popular uses of literature.

'Come on back to the war': Germany as the Other National Other in Canadian Popular Culture

This essay argues for bringing the methodology of post-colonial studies to bear on mainstream Canadian popular culture, towards a rethinking of Canada's ideological affinities with nations traditionally considered as Canada's 'Others,' the United Kingdom and the United States, through the mobilizations of popular culture for militarized nation-building. This argument identifies Germany's role in popular Canadian literature as a recurring national 'Other' against which Canadian nationalism develops, sensitized to the discourse of national security. Representations of Germany as a chronotope of distant war and natural evil recur among some of the most internationally famous works of Canadian literature. Those read here include Anne of Green Gables , 'In Flanders Fields,' Never Cry Wolf , The Handmaid's Tale , the oeuvre of Leonard Cohen, and Neuromancer . The essay concludes with thoughts on the ironies and implications of transnational stereotype and state policy in the popular uses of literature.

Knock from below

Russia's brutal assault on Chechnya has revealed more than the political value of a distant war - it has also exposed the crisis facing Russian journalism

Book Reviews

The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes and Other Eccentric Readings. Michael Atkinson Tom Clancy: A Critical Companion. Helen S. Garson Tony Hillerman: A Critical Companion. John M. Reilly Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Simon Frith Wild Bill Hickok: The Man and His Myth. Joseph G. Rosa Buffalo Bill and His Wild West: A Pictorial Biography. Joseph G. Rosa and Robin May American Images of China, 1931–1949. T. Christopher Jespersen Cyberville Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town. Stacy Horn Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America. Andrea Stulman Dennett The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. Martin F. Norden Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. Stephen A. Mrozowski, Grace H. Ziesing, and Mary C. Beaudry The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb. Dennis D. Wainstock Yankee Correspondence: Civil War Letters between New England Soldiers and the Home Front. Ed. Nina Silber and Mary Beth Stevens The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War. Paul Hendrickson Once Upon a Distant War: Young War Correspondents in the Early Vietnam Battles. William Prochnau Showing Off: The Geltung Hypothesis. Philip L. Wagner The Mountain West: Interpreting the Folk Landscape. Terry G. Jordan, Jon T. Kilpinen, and Charles F. Gritzner Biographies of Books: The Compositional Histories of Notable American Writings. Ed. James Barbour and Tom Quirk Anne Rice: A Critical Companion. Jennifer Smith Postcards in the Library: Invaluable Visual Resources. Norman D. Stevens Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Pamela Robertson Enterprising Women. Camille Bacon‐Smith Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815–1852. David Schuyler The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes a Public History. Delores Hayden Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back. Jane Holtz Kay

The summer of 1914: diary of a botanist

F.O. Bower, F.R.S., Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, attended the 1914 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Australia as President of Section K (Botany). Items from the daily diary that he kept include a running commentary on shipboard life on the outward voyage, sharp observations on some of his scientific colleagues and on meetings, the impacts of news and rumours of the distant war, and describe the hazards of the return voyage at peril from German commerce raiders.

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell, and Ernest Haycox by Stephen L. Tanner

190 Western American Literature wind gusting the tent in on the cookstove. Just as I was fascinated by the winter incur­ sions ofRawlins’s earlier book, Sky’s Witness, so I was intrigued by the down-to-earth realismoffurtherWyomingexperiences. But these forays take thereader beyond therugged back-country ofthe Salt River Range. Rawlins’s words lead into the “broken country”ofone’s own memories ofthat distant war and of one’s youthful plights and passions. Sometimes witty, sometimes wise, often poignant, and usually provocative, Broken Country effectively herds the readeralong.WhileI’mnotterriblyfondofsheep(neitherisRawlins), Idefinitelyfound thesepages tobe goodgrazing. ANNRONALD University ofNevada, Reno Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. By Lee Clark Mitchell. (Chicago: UniversityofChicagoPress, 1996. 348 pages, $29.95.) Ernest Haycox. ByStephenL.Tanner. (NewYork:TwaynePublishers, 1996. 150pages, $26.95.) Novels ofthe West deservedly are subject to much scholarly interest, but popular Westernsareonlyrecentlybeginningtoreceiveacademicrespect.Tworecentbooksadd muchtoourknowledgeoftheseformulastories. LeeClarkMitchell’sWesterns provides abroad overviewofthe popularWesterngenre itself; Stephen Tanner’sErnest Haycox provides a specialized studyofone ofthe genre’sbest authors. Interestingly, Mitchell’s basic thesis inhis broad studyis borne out byTanner inhis specialized study. Thebasic themeofpopularWesternshasalwaysbeen,Mitchell’sthesisasserts, the “construction of masculinity.” Thus, Mitchell traces the development of the Western beginning with Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales through the panoramic paintings of Albert Bierstadt. Then Mitchell analyzes in detail major novels of Wister, Grey, Schaeffer, L’Amour, andmajor filmWesterns fromthefifties to the present. Westerns provides an excellent overview of the basic scholarship and the agreedupon lines of development within the genre. It is a substantial book, beautifully illus­ trated with black and white photographs of paintings and movie stills. Here, Westerns come alive because this is not so much a book about other books as a book about the Western myth itself, written by an author who has great respect for an often maligned subject.Therareclosetextual analyses ofRiders ofthe Purple Sage andHondo arepar­ ticularly useful. Also the book is documented with extensive bibliographical notes and commentary. If there is aweakness to this study, it might be that while Mitchell treats the great representative works ofthe genre to extensive analysis, he fails adequately to showthe relationshiptothelargenumbers ofotherpopular works inthefield. Forexample, Grey and L’Amour admittedly are major popular writers of Westerns, but Mitchell barely mentions Max Brand, Clarence Mulford, Luke Short, or Ernest Haycox, lesser writers but extremely popular writers intheir day. Dothe observations pertaining to the repre­ sentative novels applytothe otherformulanovels?Mitchell mightmaketheconnection clearer. Certainly, however, Mitchell’s study opens a large field ofinquiry for others to pursue. Reviews 191 Although Stephen Tanner gives no indication of familiarity with Mitchell’s concur­ rent study, Tanner’s analysis of Ernest Haycox’s short stories and novels bears out the thesis that Westerns are essentially concerned with developing an adequate conception of masculinity for their own time. Also, Tanner shows Haycox’s debt to Cooper and even to Bierstadt’s paintings for his interpretation of the West. As usual within the Twayne format, Tanner’s study gives an overview of the author’s life and all the works, notjust the most famous works. But Tanner gives us much more. He provides an excellent discussion of the popular fiction versus quality fiction controversy. In fact, his stated aim is to examine how “to evaluate a first-rate author in an allegedly second-rate genre.” Tanner also provides the most extensive biography of Haycox to date, concentrating, of course, on his development of the literary career. The book is excellently researched with extensive use of letters and other primary docu­ ments. Unfortunately, those seeking detailed studies of any particular Haycox story or novel may be disappointed in this book. No single novel receives much more than two pages of analysis. In his treatment of The Wild Bunch, Tanner even lists elements of the novel that could be analyzed. That’s fine if we were to expect some great rush on Haycox studies, but this Twayne volume may be the only study of these novels for many years. Also, unlike Lee Clark Mitchell, Tanner does not seem to respect Westerns as literature. Mitchell’s book exudes the West. We feel the movement and atmosphere of Westerns themselves. But most of Tanner’s study is devoted to showing how Haycox attempted to transcend...

A short but distant war - the Falklands campaign.

A short but distant war - the Falklands campaign.

Bret Harte’s Civil War Poems: Voice of the Majority

J A C K S C H E R T I N G Utah State University Bret Harte’s Civil War Poems: Voice of the Majority Bret Harte tried his hand at poetry before finding his true métier — the short story. With few exceptions, his poems are seldom read, for the simple reason that they are not very good poems. Most are commentaries on passing events, excessively sen­ timental, and larded with the inflated diction which appeals to a frontier community concerned about its level of cultural sophisti­ cation. In spite of these (and other) artistic defects, some of Bret Harte’stopical poems merit consideration. His Civil War poems for example. If we hold our critical faculties in check and content ourselves with evaluating these poems as cultural documents, we can acquire from them a better understanding of the manner in which Californians responded to that distant war, a war which touched their day-to-day affairs so lightly. And because the war was so physically remote from their state, we might assume that Californians were indifferent to the struggle. This seems to be the reasoning behind the following statement in Ray Allen Billington’s classic history, Westward Expansion: To the westerner there was nothing remarkable in the fact that the mining frontier advanced rapidly while the United States was fighting a war for existence. That he should travel east to lend his weight to Union or Confederacy never entered his head or, if it did, was dismissed as a fantastic notion. He was, like all frontiersmen, concerned not with distant events but with affairs transpiring under his nose. His provincialism rested partially on the isolation of pioneer settlements, but was due primarily to the limitless economic oppor­ tunities offered by the frontier; why bother with the outside world when a fortune lav on your doorstep? Whenever chances for economic betterment w'ere greatest, preoccupation with local affairs mounted. That certainly was the case during the Civil War. What mattered that eastern streams ran red with blood when western streams concealed pockets of yellow gold? Westerners suffered no pangs of conscience as they ignored the war raging beyond the Missis­ sippi to search for precious metals.1 'Westward, Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, 2nd ed. (New York, 1960), 617. 134 Western American Literature This observation — no doubt valid in the main — is in need of qualification with respect to the situation in California. If Bret Harte’s Civil War poems articulated public sentiment, as their popularity suggests, this is a strong indication that the Californians followed the war effort with more than passing interest. When the gathering storm cast its shadow across California, there was no question as to which side Bret Harte would support. By then he had become acquainted with the social and political leaders of San Francisco through Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont, a socialite with an abiding interest in letters. Impressed by the quality of an article which the young writer and typesetter had written for the Golden Era, she began inviting Harte to her Sunday soirées. At the elegant Frémont home, Harte met such ardent Free-soilers as Senator Baker from Oregon and Thomas Starr King, a Unitarian minister and member of the Boston Transcendental Club. Starr King’s deeply-held convictions on the moral issues of the war were translated into powerful orations which, according to one source,2 kept California in the Union camp. Bret Harte idolized King and, under the minister’s guiding hand, soon became directly involved in the Union cause. His first public appearance was made at the conclusion of a campaign speech in which Senator Baker urged Californians to support Lincoln. Frank (Bret) Harte was the young man whojumped upon the platform beside Senator Baker, franti­ cally waved the American flag, and set off the greatest demonstra­ tion of the San Francisco campaign.3This was in October of 1860; three months later the nation was at war. When the War broke out, California’s sympathies followed three general patterns. Thousands of Southerners had partici­ pated in the Gold Rush, and thousands more had migrated over­ land to settle in the state. As might be expected...