WONDROUS CALS Book Club 2

Ellecom, 29-6-2024

The second session was a success only paralleled by the first session! We discussed the many absurdities of war and although no coat-racks were destroyed, I did burn a pan beyond usefulness. If you want to read the essay I wrote in response to the session, you can find it here: Preparing Against War: The Absurdity of War Narratives.

The page for the next session can be found here. If you’re interested in joining, you can sign up for the mailing list, join the Signal group or let me know you want to join this session via this form. I’d love to hear from you.

Anti-heroism: the Absurdity of War

War is intense and full of the biggest possible emotions. Representing war is therefore almost always dramatic, epic or heroic. However, there is no way to accurately represent the experiences of the soldiers and civilians in a battle zone to readers immediately. There is always the risk of glorifying the noble sacrifices and brave perseverance of those fighting for their lives or any other cause, even when war is also tedious, degrading and ridiculous. For this CALS Book Club, let’s discuss the limits of conveying war experiences, how to represent war in literature and the ways these questions relate to our perspective on wars that are presently going on.

Required reading: none!
Short read: Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen.
Longer read: “Unthinkability” by Martin Amis (from the book Einstein’s Monsters).
Extra reading: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Human Acts by Han Kang.