From Here to Eternity

Because it’s been Oscar week, From Here to Eternity movie with Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster was on.  About all I remembered was the memorable beach scene and that it was from the 50s.  I watched a few minutes last night and then turned to something else.

This morning a read a few Amazon book reviews for the 1951 book. Reviewers considered it pretty racy for 1951 but in this era, not so much.  Includes homosexuality and racism and bad language. This reviewer uses the name LEE.

“ I picked up this book knowing very little about James Jones. I'm not sure he'll be one of our enduring writers, and mostly he's known to the current generation, as he was to me, by his film adaptations. I recalled seeing "The Thin Red Line" when it came out. Actually I recalled little more than that, merely that it was a pensive, artsy Malick movie. As for "From Here to Eternity," I recalled the black and white image of the couple rolling in the surf. So I guess I assumed the novel was primarily some sort of love story. It is something much more than that, something unique and important for being a historical document of the peacetime army prior to World War II as much as it is a work of literature. Jones was an expert at creating enduring characters: Prewitt, a private from the Kentucky coal mines; Warden, a staff sergeant; Maggio, a private from New York City; and the women they love, Karen Holmes, the wife of Captain Milt Holmes; and Lorene, a prostitute working in Honolulu. Prewitt ("Prew") is the book's central character. He seems to be the best at whatever he tries, whether it's bugling, boxing, flirting, or soldiering. Despite all these talents, he also has a penchant for self-destruction. He quits the bugle corps and refuses to fight on the boxing squad, which would've made things much easier for him. Eventually he lands in the stockade, where he witnesses the slow disintegration of his friend Maggio (who has also become a prisoner). Jones uses Prew's downward arc, and his eventual love affair with Lorene, as the book's trajectory. Of course, we all know what's about to happen at Pearl Harbor, so the attack looms over everything else in "From Here to Eternity." The manner in which half-drunk, surprised soldiers responded to the attack is certainly worth a read. Apparently Jones' editors cut over a hundred pages from the manuscript due to offensive language, and these pages have since been restored, as they should be. To our contemporary sensibilities, these sections are relatively tame but cumulatively have the effect of showing what these soldiers were truly like. We hear all this stuff about "The Greatest Generation," and the men who fought in WWII are deified. Rightly they should be praised for their bravery and sacrifice, but it was refreshing to find, on reading "From Here to Eternity," that they were humans just like those of any other era. If you put a bunch of men together in a barracks, they are going to fixate on women, alcohol, gambling, etc. So I thought the R-rated material in Jones' book was essential. There was a lot of casual racism, which was hard to stomach, but once again I believe this was authentic to the period. The soldiers were even racist toward the Germans and Jews in their own ranks, and to his credit Jones does try to show the pernicious effects of this. You just have to wade through the racist sections, or through Jones' many attempts at pidgin English, which are of course offensive. My ultimate gripe with "From Here to Eternity" was that the narrative was too loose, the major plot points too few, to support a book of nearly 900 pages. I think the book could have been cut to 400 or 500 pages and been stronger for it. I suppose Jones wanted to turn in a doorstop that would be considered important in the manner of Mailer's "Naked and the Dead," but I think he could've cut a lot of internal monologue and mundane detail. Jones didn't quite know when to end chapters, for example. He also had some stylistic quirks, such as using abbreviations and contractions without punctuation. And so many adverbs! Sometimes the author would use multiple adverbs, and sometimes the same adverb, in a single sentence. That's what his editor should've been cutting. None of the characters emerge from the book unscathed, and they linger with the reader. This book, with its drinking sessions, serial adultery, and weekly trips to the whorehouse, will dispel any wholesome notions of the era of our grandparents. But it is a worthwhile novel for its fascinating, gritty take on the lead-up to combat.”