Paul Fussell | |
|---|---|
 Fussell in Paris, France, May 1945 | |
| Born | (1924-03-22)22 March 1924 |
| Died | 23 May 2012(2012-05-23) (aged 88) |
| Occupation | Educator; historian;social critic; author |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Pomona College (B.A.), Harvard University (MA), (PhD) |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Years active | 1951–2003 |
| Notable awards | Literary: National Book Award;National Book Critics Circle Award; Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Rosalind Fussell, Samuel Wilson Fussell |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States of America |
| Battles / wars | World War II |
| Awards | Purple Heart;Bronze Star |
| Signature |  |
Paul Fussell Jr. (22 March 1924 – 23 May 2012) was an Americancultural andliterary historian, author and university professor.[1] His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary onAmerica's class system.[1] Fussell served in the103rd Infantry Division duringWorld War II and waswounded in fighting in France. Returning to the US, Fussell wrote extensively and held several faculty positions, most prominently atRutgers University (1955–1983) and at theUniversity of Pennsylvania (1983–1994). He is best known for his writings about World War I and II,[1] which explore what he felt was the gap between the romantic myth and the reality of war;[2] he made a "career out of refusing to disguise it or elevate it".[3]
Born and raised inPasadena, California, Fussell was the second of three children. His father, Paul Fussell (1895–1973), son of a widowed schoolteacher, became a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles with the firm ofO'Melveny & Myers, and served as President of theLos Angeles County Bar Association in 1947.[4] His mother, Wilhma Wilson Sill (1893–1971), was the daughter of a carriage trimmer in Illinois.[5][6] His brother,Edwin Sill Fussell, was an author, poet, and professor of American Studies at theUniversity of California, San Diego; his sister Florence Fussell Lind lived inBerkeley, California.[7]
His daughter, Rosalind, is an artist-teacher in Arizona and the author of a graphic novel,Mammoir: A Pictorial Odyssey of the Adventures of a Fourth Grade Teacher with Breast Cancer. His son, Samuel Wilson Fussell, a writer and hunter in Montana, is the author ofMuscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder.[citation needed]
Starting in 1941, Fussell attendedPomona College until he enlisted in theUnited States Army in September 1942 and was commissioned as an officer the next year. He landed in France in fall 1944 as a 20-year-old second lieutenant with the103rd Infantry Division, was wounded while fighting inAlsace, and was awarded theBronze Star andPurple Heart. Following theend of the war in Europe, Fussell returned to the United States where he was assigned to the45th Infantry Division, which was preparing for theanticipated Allied invasion ofJapan. Fussell's recollections of hearing the news of the atomic bombings ofHiroshima andNagasaki, while waiting stateside to deploy would later form the basis of his essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb".[8]
He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946, returned to Pomona to finish his B.A. degree in 1946–1947, married fellow Pomona graduateBetty Harper in 1949, and completed his MA (1949) and PhD (1952) atHarvard University.[9]
He began his teaching career atConnecticut College (1951–55) before moving toRutgers University in 1955 and finally theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1983. He also taught at theUniversity of Heidelberg (1957–58) andKing's College London (1990–92). As a professor, he travelled widely with his family throughout Europe from the 1950s to '70s, taking Fulbright and sabbatical years in Germany, England and France.[10]
Betty Fussell has described their marriage and its breakup in 1981 in her memoir,My Kitchen Wars.[11] After Fussell moved from his home in Princeton, New Jersey, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he divorced Betty and married Harriette Behringer. He retired from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and lived with his wife in Oregon.[10]
When he first entered college, Fussell intended a career in journalism. His plans changed when his sergeant was killed beside him in combat, about which he wrote in his memoirDoing Battle (1996).[12] In his writings he opposed war, promoting instead a vision of rational enlightenment. He pointed to what he saw as the hypocrisy of governmental speech and the corruption of popular culture.[6]
His published thesis,Theory of Prosody in Eighteenth-Century England, was developed intoPoetic Meter and Poetic Form (1965), a popular textbook for understanding poetry.[13]Samuel Johnson and The Life of Writing (1971)[14] offered an analysis of the work of the English lexicographer,Samuel Johnson.The Anti-Egotist, Kingsley Amis: Man of Letters was a study of the life and work of friend and colleague,Kingsley Amis.[15]
The award-winningThe Great War and Modern Memory (1975)[16] was a cultural and literary analysis of the impact ofWorld War I on the development of modern literature and modern literary conventions.[1]John Keegan said its effect was "revolutionary", in that it showed how literature could be a vehicle for expressing the experience of large groups.[1] "What Paul did was go to the literary treatments of the war by 20 or 30 participants and turn them into an encapsulation of a collective European experience". (John Keegan)[1]Joseph Heller called it "the best book I know of about world war one". However, a number of modern historians have criticised Fussell's treatment of the war as deeply flawed with significant factual errors and tendentious conclusions.[17]
Abroad: British Literary Travelling Between the Wars (1980) was a pioneering academic examination oftravel literature which examined the travel books ofEvelyn Waugh,Graham Greene,D. H. Lawrence andRobert Byron.[1]
Fussell stated that he relished the inevitable controversy ofClass: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983)[18] and indulged his increasing public status as a loved or hated "curmudgeon"[1] in the rant calledBAD: or, The Dumbing of America (1991). In between,Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (1988)[19] confirmed his war against governmental and military doublespeak and prepared the way forWartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (1989).[20] The epiphany of his earlier essay, "My War", found full expression in his memoirDoing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (1996): "My Adolescent illusions, largely intact to that moment, fell away all at once, and I suddenly knew I was not and never would be in a world that was reasonable or just".[6] The last book by Fussell published while he was alive,The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944–45 (2003)[21] was once again concerned with the experience of combat in World War II.
Fussell's 1975 literary studyThe Great War and Modern Memory won theNational Book Award incategory Arts and Letters,[22] theNational Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, and theRalph Waldo Emerson Award ofPhi Beta Kappa.[9] It was ranked number 75 in theModern Library's Board's List of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century.[23]
He was elected in 1977 a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature.[24]
He won the 2005Hessell-Tiltman Prize forThe Boys' Crusade.[25] Fussell was one of several veterans interviewed in theKen Burns and Lynn Novick documentaryThe War in 2007, and in the 1999 ABC-produced documentaryThe Century: America's Time.[citation needed]
Fussell died of natural causes on 23 May 2012, at a long-term care facility inMedford, Oregon. He had previously lived inPortland, Oregon, for two years.[26] He was 88.
