Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography

The quintessential memoir of the generation of Englishmen who suffered in WWI is among the bitterest autobiographies ever written. Robert Graves's stripped-to-the-bone prose seethes with contempt for his class, his country, his military superiors & the civilians who mindlessly cheered the carnage from the safety of home. His portrait of the stupidity & petty cruelties endemic in England's elite schools is almost as scathing as his depiction of trench warfare. Nothing could equal his bone-chilling litany of meaningless death, horrific encounters with gruesomely decaying corpses & even more appalling confrontations with the callousness & arrogance of the military command. Yet this scarifying book is consistently enthralling. He's a superb storyteller, & there's clearly something liberating about burning all your bridges at 34 (his age when Good-Bye to All That was published in 1929). He conveys that feeling of exhilaration to his readers in a pell-mell rush of words that remains supremely lucid. Better known as a poet, historical novelist & critic, Graves in this one work seems more like an English Hemingway, paring his prose to the minimum and eschewing all editorializing because it would bring him down to the level of the phrase-& war-mongers he despises.--Wendy Smith