Paul Fussell, Literary Scholar and Critic, Is Dead at 88
Source: NY Times
Paul Fussell, the wide-ranging, stingingly opinionated literary scholar and cultural critic whose admiration for Samuel Johnson, Kingsley Amis and the Boy Scout Handbook was balanced against his withering scorn for the romanticization of war, the predominance of television and much of American society, died on Wednesday in Medford, Ore. He was 88.
His stepson Cole Behringer said he died of natural causes in the long-term care facility where he had spent the last two years.
Mr. Fussells widely acclaimed books encompassed seminal works on World War II, social commentary (Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear), literary criticism (The Anti-Egotist: Kingsley Amis, Man of Letters) and memoir (Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic). But he may be best remembered for The Great War and Modern Memory, his monumental study of World War I and how its horrors fostered a disillusioned modernist sensibility.
It was the perfect moment in a writers life the right subject, the right time, Mr. Fussell said of the book in an interview in 1980. It was an accidental masterpiece.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/books/paul-fussell-literary-scholar-and-critic-is-dead-at-88.html
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Hilarious and had funny illustrations like "Prole jacket-gap".
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60044.Class
I have one of his wife's cookbooks.
catnhatnh
(8,976 posts)If you could read that book without looking at your behavior and belongings and cringing it would be an epic fail of self awareness.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)I could never view decorative obelisks in quite the same light after reading his book.
R.I.P.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Raised on a lower middle class income, but went to college and graduate school. Our house was a dump with an attic fan and no central air conditioning which was brutal. Parents went to college. Money went to music lessons and symphony tickets, which would be upper middle class values.
Inherited a cashmere coat and a nice string of pearls from Mom, and a house and too much furniture which would be upper class.
Beats the hell out of me!!!
Vogon_Glory
(9,137 posts)I also read Paul Fussell's Thank God For The Atomic Book, a very interesting set of essays that challenged a lot of shibboleths and comfy assumptions held by progressives as well as by right-wingers. I really wish a lot of the wingie-dingies who beat the war drums for the 2003 war in Iraq had gone to the small bother of reading Thank God For The Atomic Bomb before sending up the balloon.
RIP, Professor Fussell. You will be sorely missed.