On Memorial Day...A Soldier of the Great War

During the mid-1990's, after making a simple (or so I thought) request to transfer to another department within Universal Studios, I found myself embroiled in a lawsuit with the company, removed from my post in lower management, and temporarily parked in the now defunt in-house 'temp pool'.

One day, in a deep drawyer behind my desk, I saw an obviously used paperback that the regular inhabitant of the post had stowed away--it was A Soldier of the Great War.

Being bored, I started reading and, by the time I finished a week or so later, I was blown away by Mark Helprin's book. One Amazon.com reviewer states:

...if "A Farewell to Arms" captured the Great War from Hemingway's uniquely American perspective, Helprin, by opting for an Italian protagonist, finds a universality that eludes Hemingway, and with prose that a century hence will continue to sing, unlike Hemingway's, which already seems stilted by comparison.

Another says this:

One of the truly great works of American fiction. I will go so far to say as it is the finest work of fiction I've read written in the last half of the 20th century.

An English/History teacher with a self-admitted grim fascination for WWI writes:

Mark Helprin has written the 'perfect' book! This novel has everything - philosophy, adventure, great drama, pathos and tragedy, surrealism (of the John Irving type), comedy, romance, art history, riveting characterization, imaginative plotting and structure, and evocative writing.

You can get a taste for the reverence Mr. Helprin brings to this topic by reading his Wall Street Journal "On Memorial Day" tribute from yesterday (5/29/10)--a sample here:

The debt we owe, and in regard to which we are at present deeply in arrears, may be difficult to pay but it is easy to see. To grasp its conspicuous clarity one need only walk among the graves and pause to give proper thought to even just one life among the many. Read slowly the name, the dates, the place where everything came to an end.

I have seen lonely people of advancing age, yet as constant as angels, keeping faith to those they loved who fell in wars that current generations, not having known them, cannot even forget. The sight of them moving hesitantly among the tablets and crosses is enough to break your heart. Let that break be the father to a profound resolution to fulfill our obligation to the endless chain of the mourning and the dead. Shall we not sacrifice where required? Shall we not prove more responsible, courageous, honest, and assiduous? Shall we not illuminate our decisions with the light that comes from the stress of soul, and ever keep faith with the fallen by embracing the soldiers who fight in our name? The answer must be that we shall.