Ann Otto
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Books

Blog

The Best Years of Their Lives

11/26/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
It's time to start book two. I'm reading about soldiers returning after WWI for a story on Appalachia. For a recent Wall Street Journal Book Section article Harvard professor and author Jane Kamensky was asked to suggest works that best reflect the impact of wartime. I decided to read a few. I re-read The Prelude by William Wordsworth for the first time since college, and I have a library request in for Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier (1918). There's a wait list on the book. Given the publication date, that's probably due to Kamensky's article.

MacKinlay Kantor
I'd never read Kantor. His Pulitzer Prize-winning Andersonville is a favorite of Civil War buffs like my spouse, but a prison account is too dark for my taste. Based on Kamensky's recommendation I decided to get an anthology of his writing and found his 1945 Storyteller. The collection of short stories with his comments after each on how and why he wrote them, and in some cases how readers reacted to them, is an excellent resource for writers and readers of his work.

Glory for Me
Those who have read Yours in a Hurry or my social media posts know that my family and I are film history aficionados. Arguably the best post-wartime film ever made is the 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives. Three service men (pictured right) of diverse ages and professions with physical and psychological wounds return to their small home town after WWII. Their adjustment to civilian life is difficult. The film is long and heart wrenching. The trailer and selections from the film can be seen on YouTube.The film won seven academy awards that year including best picture, and had the highest ticket gross and viewer attendance of any film since 1939's Gone With the Wind.

I knew that Robert E. Sherwood wrote the screenplay, but nowhere in the trailer is MacKinlay Kantor mentioned. I didn't know that the film is based on Kantor's 1945 novella Glory for Me, described by Kamensky as a "bleak blank verse" in comparison to the Norman Rockwell-type screenplay Samuel Goldwyn had expected.

Kamensky quotes Kantor: "You lug your War along with you," like a snail bearing a "scaly load that makes your shoulders raw." Kantor reminds us that, "savage too, the weather of a peace." Although the work is about WWII, it certainly reflects the post-Vietnam era and current wartime as well.

We've all lived with scars our loved ones carry—in our family's case, my father and father-in-law. Both had psychological scars, and my father carried some physical ones, too. Dad survived the battle of Myitkyina in Burma, and my father-in-law was at D-Day and later in the Battle of the Bulge. Both are gone, but the uniforms, medals and souvenirs remind us of their experiences. They gave the younger and best years of their lives to wartime. What a fitting title for Kantor's story.

Jane Kamensky's new book is A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley

MacKinlay Kantor photo: Goodreads
​
Film facts: Wikipedia

0 Comments

    Archives

    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015

    Categories

    All
    African-American
    Ann Otto Author
    Appalachia
    Architecture
    Asia
    Authors
    Aviation
    Biography
    Blog
    Burma
    California
    Cartoons
    CBI
    Coal
    Food
    France
    Geneology
    Germany
    Historical Fiction
    History
    India
    Influenza
    Iraq
    Japan
    Literature
    Little Cities Of Black Diamonds
    Los Angeles
    Military
    Netherlands
    Nonfiction
    Ohio
    Paris
    Philippines
    Quotes
    Real Estate
    Research
    Thomas Wolfe
    Travel
    Unions
    Women's History
    Writing
    WW1
    WW2

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Books