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Apollo11 -> RE: Blatantly OT topic - Thin Red Line (2/14/2005 6:52:57 PM)
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Hi all,
quote:
ORIGINAL: timtom
James Jones, the author of the trilogy one volume of which is TTRL, was an infantryman with the 25th ID during its tenure on Guadalcanal. He was wounded (or injured, I forget) towards the end, and basically spend the rest of the war in and out of hospital.
TTRL obviously draws heavily on Jones' own experiences, an impression reinforced by a reading of his 1975 "WWII: A Chronicle of Soldiering". WWII is a slender volume about American art in and about WWII, to which Jones was asked to provide the text. Here he restates many of the points made TTRL in non-fictional form, and makes it quite clear that TTRL can resonably be considered semi-fictional. Some social historians of note, like John Ellis or Gerald Lindermann, aren't shy of quoting TTRL outright in their work.
For my own part, TTRL is certainly the best piece of fiction on men in war at the individual/small-group level that I've read. As to it's authenticity, well, read it as an example of what the last months of Guadalcanal might have been like at company level. Granted artistic licence, Jones was there, and he's as good (or bad) as any other witness.
Jones' overarching points about modernism, the state, and the individual are of course as valid as any other viewpoint. I think, however, that his views are refreshingly contrary to the trimphalism and polarization that dominates Western public discourse on WWII.
There is also one other famous book about similar Pacific thematic (and movie too):
The Naked and the Dead
by Norman Mailer
The "Thin Red Line" was about company while "The Naked and the Dead" is about squad.
quote:
I understand that Malik spend a decade or so doing the script for the movie, and it seems to me the novel got transformed beyond recoqnition during this process. There's very little left of the novel, to the point where I'd say that they share little other than the title.
Either that, or the producers felt that the American public couldn't stomach the idea that wars can be "necesary" without being "good", that even among the winners there are loosers, and, indeed, that these loosers might not be particularly content with their lot.
I liked "Saving Private Ryan" and excellent war movie.
For me the combat scenes depicted in both "Thin Red Line" and "Saving Private Ryan" are of same heavyweight category but while "Saving Private Ryan" is all about "guts and glory" the "Thin Red Line" is more "humain"...
Leo "Apollo11"
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