Thursday, July 1, 2021

The disillusioned ethos of The Gallery - And what was this war really about?

John Horne Burns was not a combat soldier during World War II, but worked in military intelligence and censorship.  For a while his work was investigating crimes committed by American troops.  This kind of work, at least for a sensibility like Burns had, gives a writer an unusual perspective on war.  Thus he writes a book that is satirical, often contemptuous, and sordid.

I’m with the narrator of the “Promenades,” the sections between the short stories in The Gallery that are the wartime memoir of an author-like fellow:

I remember that my heart finally broke in Naples.  Not over a girl or a thing, but over an idea.  When I was little, they’d told me I should be proud to be an American.  And I suppose I was, though I saw no reason I should applaud every time I saw the flag in a newsreel.  But I did believe that the American way of life was an idea holy in itself, an idea of freedom bestowed by intelligent citizens on one another…  And I found that outside of the propaganda writers (who were making a handsome living from the deal) Americans were very poor spiritually.  (259)

I’ll stop here to note that long before this point I had concluded that the narrator was not the author but a parody of the author – “holy,” huh? – created for purposes as propagandistic as those of the “propaganda writers” he condemns.  He means “outside the writing of the “ etc., yes?  Not that the propaganda writers were spiritually rich, although see below.

And what was this war really about?  I decided that it was because most of the people of the world didn’t have the cigarettes, the gasoline, and the food that we Americans had.  (259)

Still, it seems to really bother this narrator that American servicemen buy cigarettes at the PX and trade them with prostitutes for sex, or that married men take up Italian girlfriends, or that officers in the censorship department spend most of their time scheming for promotions (“The Leaf,” the story I mean, is an insightful of bureaucratic literature that, like the one about syphilis treatment I mentioned yesterday should be much better known).  If American ideals are violated, Burns concludes that they must be false; if the ideals are false, the war – World War II – has no meaning.

A few pages later, after complaints about GI’s drunkenness and sexual rudeness:

And I remember seeing American MP’s beating the driver of a horse and wagon because they were obstructing traffic on Via Roma.  I don’t think the Germans could have done any better in their concentration camps.  I thought that all humanity had gone from the world, and that this war had smothered decency forever.  (262)

“[D]one any better” in cruelty!  That is a strange, strange sentence to see in 1947.  I was ready to forgive quite a few stolen cigarettes, even some cruelty, if it helped the American armed forces get on with the liberation of France and the camps.  But I was under the influence of another work of propaganda that I was reading around the same time, Joseph Kessel’s Army of Shadows, his of the moment (1943!) about the difficult, doomed heroism of the fighters in the French Resistance.  Kessel himself was not getting too rich flying a bomber for the Free French air force.  I should write more about that book.

So, I take The Gallery, like much fiction, as the exploration of a sensibility, sometimes expressed in new and surprising ways, and at other times less original and more ethically dubious.  It is of high period interest, at least.

13 comments:

  1. I think you were maybe not in the mood for the book, or maybe it just isn't your thing. I liked it a lot, myself, though of course it's no masterpiece, but then how could I resist a book that has a bravura passage about the Neapolitan dialect?

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  2. Maybe, although I think the ethical issues are pretty serious. And parts of the book are quite bad, which in a sense means not my thing, but with some aesthetic justification behind it. The last story quickly dissolves in sentiment. "Louella" is too contemptuous of its Red Cross nurse character (the other story with a female protagonist is good). Mixed, anyways. But the pre-disillusioned, solipsistic narrator is the most curious specimen.

    I typically adjust my mood to the book pretty well, and the mood of this book is sour.

    I don't remember you writing about the book at all. Was I on vacation or something? So thanks for the link.

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    1. You're the last person I would have expected to complain about ethical issues in a novel. But yes, parts of the book are quite bad, and had I been in a different mood that might have bothered me more. (Your software seems to have forgotten who I am and it nixed my previous attempt, so I'm commenting with a different sign-in. I hope it works.)

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  3. Checking to see if I can use my Google account...

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  4. The software, aargh, the software. At least my new email nonsense seems to be working more or less.

    I take the ethics as part of a description of a book. But in most books, even pretty good ones, the ethical issues are not interesting enough to mention. They are, you know, the usual thing.

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  5. Interesting. The book was, and probably still is, sitting over at my local remaindered book store. I looked at it a couple of times, but resisted. (Very rare.) Sounds like it might have been the right choice.

    And I wouldn't have had the benefit of a great origin story, like a Moravian quilt shop.

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  6. I also bought an outstanding handmade bird feeder at that Mennonite relief sale, but the birds and squirrels and prairie winters eventually destroyed it.

    If I were to do another post on The Gallery, which I am not, it would be on the positive side, about the way the narrator falls in love with the Italians, and Naples, even if some of his comparative reasons are dubious. One of the best stories is from the perspective of an Italian woman making her way through chaos.

    So I don't know. Maybe don't resist! It depends.

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    1. These days every time I don't buy a book I feel virtuous. But maybe I'll have to have another look at it the next time I'm there.

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  7. Huh. That sounds like some very strange logic to me.

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  8. Whichever logic you are referring to, it is strange. If it is the logic of the narrator of Burns's book, it is the expression of a strong sensibility, at least.

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  9. I read Curzio Malaparte's The Skin recently, which is also about the American "liberation" of Naples and the Italian idealisation of the American GI. From what I remember, the Italians are less bothered with the purchasing of sex with cigarettes business. It also has a variety of interesting ethical issues - not least whether the book is reportage (as it's made to seem), or just fiction - something even Malaparte seems to want you to question.

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  10. Malaparte cheerfully admitted he made stuff up, but that's not the ethical problem with the book -- the virulent homophobia is. Still, he's always enjoyable reading (I recently finished The Kremlin Ball and liked it despite the blatant repetitions -- he died without finishing and polishing it).

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  11. Right, Malaparte. I'll bet The Skin makes an interesting counterpoint to The Gallery.

    The anti-Puritan who turns out to be more Puritan than the Puritans is a common American phenomenon. Malaparte cannot be surprised or disappointed that humans are a species of animal. Burns is, or acts like, he is surprised.

    Whatever Burns is, though, he is not a homophobe. Interesting, as I said, counterpoint.

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