On War and Writing

Hynes (The Unsubstantial Air), a professor of literature emeritus at Princeton, delivers a thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of (mostly) previously published essays focused on the written expression of war, especially the two world wars. He himself was a Marine pilot in WWII, and he infuses a welcome personal touch into this challenging topic. Though the essays are all discrete, certain themes emerge: the disconnect between rhetoric and reality, the difference between immediate and retrospective accounts (or, as he says “the need to report and the need to remember”). Famous writers get their due—among them, Vera Brittain, Thomas Hardy, Rebecca West, William Butler Yeats—as well as lesser-known names, such as posthumously published WWI memoirist Graeme West (The Diary of a Dead Officer). Most of all, Hynes is interested in how language shapes people’s ideas about combat, and he is an instructive interpreter of “words about war, and the narrative they compose.” He also brings himself to the table: he marvelously recounts his participation as a commentator and adviser for Ken Burns’s The War documentary, and elegiacally chronicles a flight he made in later life over the battlefields of WWI, concluding the book by demonstrating how images can say as much as words. His work is suffused with both academic credibility and personal commitment. (Mar.)