I was lucky to have a set of grandparents living in my college town, and I would often go over there for a night or more to study, relax, or just get away from my busy college scene. This was waaaaay before any of the electronic distractions we have now, and I remember reading one book from their collection multiple times while lounging on their living room couch:
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
When the movie came out last year (and was nominated for best picture!) I was reminded how that book absorbed me decades ago. I didn’t remember the specific details so much as the feeling of the book, which is written from a German’s perspective during WWI, that this war was horrible for all. I also remember the book being a quick read, possible in a weekend.
The new movie, which I watched because I always watch all the nominations for best picture, didn’t provide the feelings I remembered from the book. Although it was a realistic picture of the trenches and war, and this is why it was nominated, it was missing the personal reflections from the book, which reads as a memoir.
So to try and remember the details from the book, I recently re-read this masterpiece and was almost as immersed as I remember being all those years ago.
The copy I read years ago was a hardback like this one pictured. The new paperback cover claims it as “the greatest war novel of all time.” And I can’t imagine another one providing a clearer, more personal story.
From how children were drafted to fight and had no chance:
“…but for most of them the uniform is far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish measurements.”
To the realities of the front, the trenches (the movie did help me better imagine these things), the hospitals, and even of leave.
“What is leave? — A pause that only makes everything after it so much worse.”
And what comes next – if anyone even physically survives?
Through the years our business has been killing; — it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?
This is a book (one of the few) that I have read several times and may even read again someday. I love having the memory of reading it from the calm and safety of my grandparents’ couch, but it would stand up as a classic wherever one reads it.