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{"id":61,"date":"2012-05-28T10:11:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T17:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jeremylott\/?p=61"},"modified":"2012-05-29T09:14:36","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T16:14:36","slug":"thank-god-for-paul-fussell-and-other-blogposts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jeremylott\/2012\/05\/thank-god-for-paul-fussell-and-other-blogposts\/","title":{"rendered":"Thank God for Paul Fussell and Other Blogposts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m seriously contemplating making a regular thing out of the New Republic<\/em>\u2018s suspicious silence on Paul Fussell. Granted, events can and do catch editors flatfooted and unprepared. But at this point I fear something worse must be at work.<\/p>\n

Fussell died Wednesday. Slate<\/em> took its time and published a decent essay<\/a> of Fussell\u2019s literary impact on Friday. There, Fussell admirer Stephen Metcalf wrote that Fussell \u201cwas at his best, was most himself, when writing about organized killing,\u201d but judged his influence to be portable to peacetime settings as well. It was a good essay leading up to Memorial Day. I led with it on Real Clear Books<\/a> this weekend (along with this stinging dissent<\/a> about Fussell\u2019s book Class<\/em>). So, eventually, did Arts & Letters Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But from the New Republic<\/em>, still, crickets.<\/p>\n

$\"Thank$ <\/p>\n

TNR<\/em>\u2018s The Book page reposted this \u201cclassic\u201d piece<\/a> by George Kennan on Americans and Russians rather than repost the very famous essay that became the basis for Fussell\u2019s Thank God for the Atom Bomb and other Essays<\/em>. The front page called out a review<\/a> by scholar and failed Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff on a book of hand-wringing about free markets with the headline \u201cThe Skyboxification of American Life.\u201d TNR\u2019s aggregator The Reader<\/a>, which at this point specializes in warmed over Arts & Letters Daily links, can\u2019t even bring itself to reheat the Slate<\/em> link.<\/p>\n

Again, as I have said, this is extra odd, because the New Republic<\/em> published one of Fussell\u2019s most important essays. Now, in the wake of his death, it is proceeding as if that essay never existed at a time when its republication would get actual traffic. Why wouldn\u2019t it want those hits? A few friends have speculated to me that TNR<\/em> is staffed with a bunch of younger staffers who don\u2019t remember such things, but that can\u2019t be it. Grand culture editor Leon Wieseltier has weathered several regime changes at the magazine, including a recent handover in ownership. The Fussell essay appeared two years before his appointment in 1983 but he must remember it.<\/p>\n

So why ignore it? Embarrassment? It\u2019s possible. In the famous essay, Fussell set himself up as the sworn enemy of moral reasoning that is too abstract, too removed from what, these days, we would call the \u201cboots on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fussell responded to liberal moral hand-wringing about Hiroshima on one of its many anniversaries by saying, OK, let\u2019s see what the troops who would have invaded Japan have to say on the subject. He consulted the writings of the grunts and found in them a plausible argument for why one might say \u201cThank God for the atom bomb.\u201d They argued Japanese society had been driven collectively so war mad that the distinctions we normally make between soldiers and civilians no longer made sense.<\/p>\n

Soldiers in the Pacific theater (Fussell got his \u201cass shot off\u201d in Europe) viewed the entire island chain as one long meat grinder that would kill at least American soldiers who were already pretty chewed up on the eve an armed invasion that didn\u2019t have to happen because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You don\u2019t have to agree with their point of view but it might be worth considering at greater length. You can find that here<\/a> on this day of memorial, but not on the website of the New Republic<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"