Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell, Jr.was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary on America's class system. Fussell served in the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II and was wounded in fighting in France. Returning to the US, Fussell wrote extensively and held several faculty positions, most prominently at Rutgers Universityin New Brunswick, New Jersey, and at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth22 March 1924
CountryUnited States of America
Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.
Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.
The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.
If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another.
To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason.
What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism; all else is publicity.
Today the Somme is a peaceful but sullen place, unforgetting and unforgiving. ... To wander now over the fields destined to extrude their rusty metal fragments for centuries is to appreciate in the most intimate way the permanent reverberations of July, 1916. When the air is damp you can smell rusted iron everywhere, even though you see only wheat and barley.
The wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.
Things without defense: insects, kittens, small boys.
There is no Apocalypse.
If the term discussion has always seemed to me to imply mild warnings of wasted time, workshop sets off a clangorous alarm.
Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.
The simple is carefully shunned by those who labour to seem what they would be.
We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all.