5/30/2023 0 Comments Fussell classThe first, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), looked at how World War I shaped 20th century literature, particularly the role that trench warfare played in a whole generation’s perception of the futility of modern life. He became famous for several books he wrote about war in America. He published several books early in his career, including Theory of Prosody in Eighteenth-Century England, a popular textbook for understanding poetry, and Samuel Johnson and The Life of Writing.īut that’s not why his obituary was on the homepage of The New York Times the day after he died. After earning the Bronze Star and Purple Heart fighting in France, he became an English professor, first at Connecticut College, and later at Rutgers University and the University of Pennsylvania. Unusually for an English professor, Fussell’s writings on American society also exemplified the characteristics of superior journalism: irreverence, accuracy, fairness, and lucidity a deep suspicion of official narratives and an obsession with often-uncomfortable truths.īorn and raised in Pasadena, California, Fussell attended Pomona College until he enlisted in the Army in 1943. With his death, America lost a steady voice for cantankerous protest against all so many pedestrian national institutions and assumptions-the gourmet restaurant, the uniform, the armed forces. Paul Fussell, historian and cultural critic, died last week at 88.
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