The End of the War-Hero Writer

Modern warfare does not a good movie make. Nor a good book, I suspect. Drones zipping about like flies and being chased by other drones and interceptors are not the same as John Wayne charging with his Marines onto the beach at Iwo Jima, not to mention Gary Cooper as Sergeant York picking off the Germans on the Western Front. Old-style warfare tended to get the creative juices flowing throughout history. Papa Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald became stars following the First World War, with their war-background books, as did Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, and James Jones following the Second World War. 

It is no longer fashionable among my friends to disparage or praise writers because no one reads any more. It used to be different. As the last century unfolded, writers became famous, publicized like movie stars, with lifestyles to match. They had license to drink more, make love to more women, and engage in public arguments galore. Overnight writers had become super stars, and I for one was drawn to them like the proverbial moth to you know what. 

I was lucky to meet the three great postwar writers, Mailer, Shaw, and Jones (all three had seen combat), the latter only once when I spent a whole day interviewing him in Paris. Norman and Irwin became friends of mine, and I remember Norman telling Irwin Shaw, “Irwin—you, physical courage. Me—moral courage.” The Young Lions, The Naked and the Dead, and From Here to Eternity were three great novels that captured the American fighting man. A German, Erich Maria Remarque, had captured the public’s attention with his magnificent All Quiet On The Western Front following the First World War. The young German soldier Paul had feelings and doubts and aspirations and was like most of those on the opposite trenches for four long years. Irwin’s young German in Lions, Christian Diestl, also had dreams and decent feelings, and Shaw was criticized and insulted for showing a German to be normal—needless to say, from those back home who had never experienced combat or been in a war, that is. The French and Italians did not produce any earth-shaking volume about the war for obvious reasons. Nor did the Brits, funny enough, except for the “Sword of Honor” trilogy of Evelyn Waugh. 

I have read all or most of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, and greatly enjoyed them. I never met the man who died 60 years ago this Easter. But I’ve known many of his acquaintances, including Auberon Waugh, his first born, who was a fellow columnist at the Spectator with me for many years until his death 15 years or so ago. Bron, as we all called him, was as mischievous as his father, but was not a hater of humanity, unlike his old man. Waugh junior disliked Americans to a degree that he would write columns describing some obese young American tourist and her oversized shoes. Bron himself was no beauty. Overweight, bald, with tufts of hair jutting over his ears, he wore tiny glasses on the tip of his nose. While doing his military service, he managed to shoot himself with his jammed Brent gun, and suffered from his wounds for the rest of his life. I once reminded him it was a Brit who had shot him, not a Yank, but it was no use. Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Taki diagnosed his anti-Americanism as pathological envy.

His father Evelyn was far worse as a person. Separating the writer from the writing is important. As a person he was a grumpy, drunken, social climber, a practicing homosexual who had seven children by his second wife, a brave soldier and a vicious gossiper, who wrote the most exquisite pared-down prose. Go figure, as they say. The nice man theory of literary merit is nonexistent. In our emotional era of cancelling and shouting down anyone that offends us, Waugh would have been a goner, along with his work. Waugh senior’s books were a delight. Brideshead Revisited, Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust, Decline and Fall, Black Mischief, Scoop and others were full of characters shown with clarity and elegance in all their absurdities. Yet Waugh’s predilection for grotesque rudeness and condescension to anyone below his social status, especially any foreigner, was what betrayed Waugh’s insecurity of having been born not of the upper classes. He was the most awful of men and the most delightful of writers. 

I’ve gone on too long about Waugh because compared to him, my three American novelists, Mailer, Shaw and Jones, were angels of compassion and understanding. Shaw and Mailer were terrific womanizers, chasing the fairer sex non-stop, whether they were married or not. Jones was more of a homebody and loved his wife Gloria dearly. As did Shaw love Marian, but just couldn’t stop going after every woman he came across. No wonder I wanted to become a writer. 

Now if anyone is reading this with literary ambitions, don’t waste your time going to the Middle East. Only machines are doing the fighting and pilots you cannot see or meet. Drones are rather hard to capture on paper and endear them to your readers. Give it up and become an influencer instead.

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