1929: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Who?
            Erich Paul Remark (1898 – 1970) is better known by the pseudonym Erich Maria Remarque (Maria being his mother’s maiden name).  The son of a poor bookbinder, Erich was born in Osnabrück, Germany.  He was attending school to become a teacher when, in 1916, he was called to fight in World War One.  At the Battle of Flanders, in July 1917, Remarque was wounded by British grenades and taken to a field hospital in Duisberg.  After returning from the war, Remarque worked as a school teacher then an ad-writer.  In 1920, he published his first novel, Die Trambaude (The Dream Room) under his own name.  He later stated in an interview that “I published an early work, a novel, whose title I will not name, even under torture.  For this reason Remark became Remarque.”  From 1927-8, Remarque’s second novel, Station am Horizont (Station at the Horizon) was serialized under his real name. Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) was published serially from November to December 1928, and published in book form in January 1929.  It was an overnight success.  It was also one of the books included in the first Nazi book burnings.  Remarque fled to Switzerland in 1933, at an indefinite point remarrying his ex-wife so she wouldn’t be forcibly repatriated.  He later moved to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1947.  In 1957, Remarque divorced his wife, and married again a year later.  Remarque passed away in Switzerland in 1970.

So what's this book about?

“We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces” (87-8).

            All Quiet on the Western Front tells Paul Bäumer’s experience of World War One.  From the front lines to his hometown, from the hospital back to the front, All Quiet is the story of one man trying to make sense of a world gone to pieces, where the difference between life and death is luck.  It is the story of how war destroys youth. 

            The passages describing the war are awe-inspiring.  Frequently horrific, they somehow retain a strange semblance of beauty and romanticism.  “There is no escape anywhere.  By the light of the shells I try to get a view of the fields.  They are a surging sea, daggers of flame from the explosions leap up like fountains” (66).  While the cover of my copy declares that this is “the greatest war novel of all time,” it is also one of the great anti-war novels.  The war is beautiful in the same way a hurricane or erupting volcano is beautiful.

Why was it so popular?

            There were two other World War One novels on this list, H.G. Wells’s Mr. Britling Sees It Through and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Both were published in 1916 and therefeore don’t cover the end of the war, and only the latter has extensive battle sequences.  Wells’s novel takes a hoepful view of the war, suggesting that people may (or at least could) create a better society out of the wreckage.  Ibáñez doesn’t suggest that war can ever be defeated, but views World War One as a necessary fight against German militarism.  Remarque better reflects the postwar perspective: the war was a tragic waste of human life.

This one sounds a familiar...

            Besides A Farewell to Arms, All Quiet on the Western Front is the only major World War One novel still read and talked about.  It has also aged spectacularly well, and in many ways is as relevant today as it was when it was written:

            “Almost all of us are simple folk.  And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers,
             workmen, or poor clerks.  Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French
             shoemaker want to attack us?  No, it is merely the rulers.  I had never seen a Frenchman
             before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as
             regards us.  They weren’t asked about it any more than we were.”

            “Then what exactly is the war for?” asks Tjaden.

             Kat shrugs his shoulders.  “There must be some people to whom the war is useful.”

            “Well, I’m not one of them,” grins Tjaden.

            “Not you, nor anybody else here.”

            “Who are they then?” persists Tjade. “It isn’t any use to the Kaiser either.  He has
             everything he can want already.”

            “I’m not so sure about that,” contradicts Kat, “he has not had a war up till now” (205-6).

            In 1930, a film version was released, winning the Academy Award for best picture and best directing.

Should I read it?

            Yes.  It’s a classic for a reason, and that reason is quality.


Also published in 1929:

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
Mahtma Gandhi - The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own

Sources:

Barker, Christine and Last, R. W. Erich Maria Remarque. London: Oswald Wolff, 1979. Print
Remarque, Erich. All Quiet on the Western Front. 1929. New York: Ballantine, 1982. Print. 
          Trans. Wheen, A. W.

1922: If Winter Comes by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Who?

Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson (1879-1971) was born in British India.   His father was a General and his mother was a Scottish noble.  He was expected to go into the military as his brothers did, but was rejected due to his poor eyesight and instead chose to study medicine in London.  He dropped out of medical school and became a journalist in London until the outbreak of World War One, in which he served with Royal Engineers and a Canadian tunneling company.  After the war, he wrote his first success, If Winter Comes.  He continued writing through the 1940’s with some commercial success.  He married in 1926 and moved to Eastbourne where he started a family. 

(Unfortunately, information on Hutchinson’s later life has been hard to find.)

So what's this book about?

If Winter Comes follows the life of Mark Sabre from 1912 through 1919.  The story takes place in an English suburb and focuses on the deterioration of Sabre’s marriage and career, in large part due to Sabre’s inability to adopt the worldview of the suburbanites, including his wife.  Throughout the story, Sabre is reunited with his real love, the Lady Tybar, and deals with changes resulting from World War One.  The book’s title comes from the last lines of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, “Oh Wind,/ If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”  And, in much the same way that nature destroys and replenishes, so does Sabre’s life fall apart and reconstruct. 

            There is no doubt that we should be rooting for Sabre throughout, and to this end, his wife, Mabel, is unlikable.  My biggest problem with this book is that I can find no reason why Mabel and Sabre ever got married in the first place.  There is nothing about their relationship before they got married, and from day one they don’t really get along.  It seems like a marriage of convenience; convenience for the author, not the characters.   On that note, most of the characters opposed to Sabre are unequivocally mean, and Sabre’s friends are all ‘good.’  In many ways, this is a romance about a man trapped between what he feels is his duty (e.g. staying with his wife, serving his country, etc.) and what he wants for himself.  As a romance, or a story or redemption through virtue, If Winter Comes is successful.

What made it so popular?

If Winter Comes became popular in Britain before making the leap across the Atlantic.  Not only did the novel benefit from word of mouth advertising, but the controversial plot elements managed to pique the public’s interest, elements that set the tone of disillusionment generally considered characteristic of literature during and after World War One. 

Why haven't I heard of it?
The elements that were controversial enough to garner the novel attention at the time have since lost their shock factor. And while If Winter Comes is an enjoyable read, there is nothing particularly transcendent about it that would put it in the realm of classics.  It was made into two films, the first in 1923 and the second in 1947, but since then has not had much of a presence in popular culture.

Should I read it?
If you like romance, then you’ll probably enjoy If Winter Comes.  



You can read If Winter Comes on Project Gutenberg.

Also published in 1922:
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Ulysses by James Joyce

Sources:
Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. ed. Stanley Kunitz and Howard Haycraft. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1942. Print.

Hutchinson, Arthur.  If Winter Comes.  1920. New York: Pocket Books Publishing, 1947.

1919: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Who?
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867 – 1928) was born in Valencia, Spain. Blasco Ibáñez (Spanish naming conventions put the family name, Blasco, second to last) was a political activist Spain’s transition from a monarchy to a republic, from a republic back to a monarchy, and the loss of much of their western territories to rebellion and conquest in the Spanish-American War.   He was briefly exiled and later imprisoned for his political support of Cuban independence.  In 1910, he founded two colonies in Argentina: Nueva Valencia and Cervantes.  His best known novels (in the English speaking world) are Blood and Sand (Sangre y Arena) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Los Cuatros Jinetes Del Apocalipsis), both of which became films in the early 1920’s, launching the career of silent film star Rudolf Valentino. 

            The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was published in Spanish in 1916, and translated to English in 1918.

So what's it about?

            The story starts with Argentinean youth Julio Desnoyers on a ship to France.  Half French himself, Julio is travelling with a number of French and German travelers returning to Europe.  The first section of the book is split between Julio’s life as a wealthy libertine ‘artist’ in Paris and his father Marcelo’s life in Argentina after fleeing France to avoid service in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.   The story continues to split its focus between Julio and his father.  The second section is lauding the brave service of the soldiers going out to war, and criticizing the cruelty and arrogance of the Germans.  Considering that the novel was published while the war was still ongoing, much of the pro-Allies discussion can be seen as propaganda, or at least an attempt to persuade readers of the time to enlist in the fight. 

            The book is strong throughout, but it shines at two points.  The history of the Desnoyers family in Argentina and the German invasion and defeat during the Battle of the Marne.  The prose beautifully displays the tragedy and inhumanity of war:   

            He went on toward the village – a mass of black walls with a few houses still intact, and             a roofless bell tower with its cross twisted by the fire.  Nobody in the streets sown with                 bottles, charred chunks of wood, and soot-covered rubbish.  The dead bodies had
            disappeared –”

Why was it so popular?

            In 1919, World War One was still on everyone’s mind, with over 100,000 American deaths and over 200,000 wounded in a war that changed who wars were fought.  Blasco Ibanez was already popular in Europe, and the book is quite good.

Why haven't I heard of it?
          Blasco Ibáñez’s popularity in the United States has decreased over the decades since his death.  As with Mr. Britling Sees It Through, this novel has, like most World War One fiction, been overshadowed by non-fiction works and by novels about the Second World War. Also like Mr. Britling, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was published in 1916, and doesn’t cover the end of the war.  Likewise, the propaganda aspect can be unappealing to some readers. 

Should I read it?

            Unless you can’t stand war novels, the answer is a resolute ‘yes.’  Despite its occasional preachiness, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a great novel.  

You can read The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on Project Gutenberg

You can watch the 1921 film version on Internet Archive

Also published in 1919:

The Budding Within by Marcel Proust
Demian by Herman Hesse
The Magic of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Sources: 

Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Trans. Charlotte Brewster            Jordan. 1918.  New York: E. P. Dutton. 1965. Print. 

Day, A. Grove and Knowlton Jr., Edgar C.  Blasco Ibáñez. New York: Twayne Publishers.                1972. Print.

1917: Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells

Who?

     Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) remains popular to this day, and is best known for his work as one of the fathers of science fiction. Wells was born in the county of Kent in England.  Growing up, his family had considerable financial trouble resulting in Wells’s placement in various harsh apprenticeship programs as a child and teenager, giving him experiences which lent themselves to some of his novels (e.g. Kipps).  He later became a teacher and, in 1895, wrote his first (and possibly most famous) novel, The Time Machine.  Between 1895 and 1901, Wells published three non-fiction books and eight more novels, including The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), and The First Men in the Moon (1901).

     Wells wrote prolifically about social and economic issues, and put forth many volumes on better ways to organize the world.  He wrote extensively on the subject of utopias and authored many non-fiction works on popular history. Yet he is remembered for little else than his science fiction, despite having published over fifty novels at the time of his death, and even more non-fiction books.  Wells passed away due to undetermined medical causes in 1946.

So what's this book about?

     Mr. Britling Sees It Through can be best explained by this passage from the novel itself:

“This story is essentially the history of the opening and of the realisation of the Great War as it happened to one small group of people in Essex, and more particularly, as it happened to one human brain” (216).

     The titular Mr. Britling is a writer primarily of essays and non-fiction books on social issues of the day and larger aspects of human nature.   The novel begins with the arrival of Mr. Direck, an American who has come to ask Mr. Britling to give a lecture in Massachusetts.  Mr. Direck stays at Mr. Britling’s home in Matching’s Easy, along with Mrs. Britling, Mr. Britling’s secretary Teddy, his wife Letty and sister-in-law Cecily (whom Mr. Direck immediately falls for), Herr Heinrich (a German student), the Britlings’ two young sons, and Hugh Britling (Mr. Britling’s older son from his first marriage).  The first section of the novel establishes these characters and focuses on the British attitude leading up to the outbreak of World War One.  The rest of the novel focuses on how life and attitudes changed (or refused to change) while some characters left for war. 

            The novel is mostly character-driven.  World events are expressed primarily as to how they affect the characters.  There is very little of the war itself in the novel, and scenes from the war are all expressed either in the form of stories from refugees or letters from soldiers on the front. 

            The characters are complex and honest, and much of the discussion of global politics and social concerns still resonate today.  There are some points where these dissertations on the ethics of war or the mechanics of attaining world peace (among other things) get hard to trudge through. 

     If the character sounds like H. G. Wells, that’s because it, in essence, is.  In Experiment in Autobiography, Wells writes: “Before the end of 1914, I had already set to work upon a record of my mental phases, elaborated in a novel, Mr. Britling Sees It Through.  It is only in the most general sense autobiographical… Mr. Britling is not so much a representation of myself as of my type and class, and I think I have contrived in that book to give not only the astonishment and the sense of traic disillusionment in a civilized mind as the cruel facts of war rose steadily to dominate everything else in life, but also the passionate desire to find some immediate reassurance amidst that whirlwind of disaster” (573).

Why was it so popular?

     Mr. Britling Sees It Through was published in England in 1916.  In 1917, the United States officially joined World War One.  There was no subject more at the forefront of the public consciousness.  H. G. Wells was already a well-known author, so it is quite easy to see how his MBSIT would be widely read. 

Why haven't I heard of it?

     For one thing, it deals very little with the events of the war itself, and the causes of the war are only debated upon by the characters.  Additionally, since the novel was published in 1916, it did not cover the end of the war or (as would be important to a modern American audience) the American involvement in the war effort.  Since the time of its publication, other novels about World War One (most notably Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front) have focused on the soldiers’ experience of the war, and non-fiction works that cover the war in its entirety have covered the social and political causes of the war in more detail than Wells’s novel.  “Following the war, popularity swung steadily toward non-fiction, until by the mid-thirties it was outselling fiction” (Mott 241).

Should I read it?

     If you have an interest in World War One, you will likely enjoy this book.  The discussions on politics and ethics and philosophy are thought-provoking and worth reading. 

You can read Mr. Britling Sees it Through on Project Gutenberg.

Also published in 1917:      

Prufrock, and Other Observation by T. S. Eliot

Sources:

Mott, Frank Luther. Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1947.

Wells, H. G.  Mr. Britling Sees It Through. London: Cassel and Company, 1916. Print.

Wells, H. G.  Experiment in Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934. Print.