On American Crass Brass

I always wondered about 
Mailer 's The Naked And The Dead  &
and Jones' From Here to Eternity.   
Why all the fuss:  The prizes?
  

A Town Like Alice by  Nevil Shute  showed me the answer. 

Shute wrote On The Beach.   In both novels he uses a polite kind of writing that the modern american reader who has grown up on Batman and Superman way too antiquated.  This, provided that one knows what antiquated is.   The which I doubt.   But, the afore mentioned American novles are anything but polite.  The two novels seem to go out of the way to offend. 

Dear friends reading this, I can hear you say, "So":  A needle pulling ....

All three novels deal with World War LL   themes.  No one could say that WWLL was polite, nice or anything other than hell.   

The two American novels read like the war was:   Rough, hell and fatal for all too many.  

Shute's book reads more like a dower report of a provincial  tea on the lawn thing of which our cousins acrross the pond are so fond.  

And there you have it.  Take an older conventinal style of writing and write about hell.  Or, use a style which reflects the utter mess that the subject matter is.   

 

Now, for an extra three points, boys and girls, what did I leave dangling in the last sentence?