Mister Roberts (1946)
Hopefully, everyone knows this story from the outstanding movie version. It's the Spring of 1945, WWII is almost over and Lt. Doug Roberts is still stuck aboard the cargo ship USS Reluctant. His heartfelt desire to see some action before the war ends is continually thwarted by the tyrannical Captain Morton, who realizes that Roberts is the only thing holding the ship together. Heggen's very funny novel portrays the running battle between Roberts and Morton and the concurrent battle between the crew and boredom as the Reluctant meanders the South Pacific well out of harm's way.
Like several other of the best novels of WWII--Catch-22 (read review), From Here to Eternity (read review), The Caine Mutiny and A Bell for Adano (read review)--the novel eschews hagiography to portray the American soldier (sailor) as being as much at war with the petty tyranny of "friendly" bureaucrats as with any enemy. This wholly American theme is somehow overlooked when people talk of WWII as a "good" war, in contrast to bad wars like Korea & Vietnam. You also don't hear this view when folks start prattling about the "Greatest Generation". It's become fashionable to look back through rose tinted glasses and turn the War into something from a Why We Fight propaganda film, with all the participants noble and willing, all their actions righteous and all doubts fleeting or nonexistent. This simplistic version of events does violence to the truth and does a real disservice to history and to our ability to learn from that history.
The quality of the literature that emerged from WWII is especially high,
an inevitable result of the very fact that it was a World War, drawing
upon the entire young manhood of the nation. We are extraordinarily
lucky that they have bequeathed us a treasure trove of brutally honest
books, remarkably free of self congratulation or justification. Hopefully,
they will continue to be read and will serve as a corrective to the ridiculous
idealization of the War in recent popular culture and a reminder that the
massive bureaucratic superstructure that we develop to fight wars, is itself
an enemy of freedom.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (B+)
