Resurrection, A War Journey: A Chronicle of Events During and Following the Attack on Fort Jeanne d'Arc at Metz, France, by F Company of the 37th ... 95th Infantry Division, November 14–21, 1944 - Softcover

Gajdusek, Robert E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268016607 ISBN 13: 9780268016609

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997

Synopsis

“Before us, several remote and now absurd wars." For Robin Gajdusek, these fields represent the first step toward resurrection as he retrieves a lost personal past through a writing catharsis which refocuses the vast battlefields of history into a singular voice. Resurrection, A War Journey is Gajdusek's dramatic account of a single week in mid-November 1944 which has taken him more than fifty years to wrestle into words. Part of Patton's Third Army in World War II, Gajdusek's unit was chosen to spearhead the first assault on the impenetrable fortifications of Metz, France, held by the Germans. Uniquely structured, Resurrection intertwines a variety of narrative forms to give voice to experience. Gajdusek's war memories awaken in his own poetry, short stories, discursive reflections, and sometimes, abortive essays, as well as in borrowed historical fragments. The remembering of war makes it real. His own physical and spiritual resurrection from lying near death in a shell hole to a miraculous recovery is an intense individual chronicle about the bonds of pain and suffering which intimately bind soldiers together while forcing each man into the isolation of his own mental journey. Once captured, Gajdusek finds himself among German soldiers too young or too old or too hideously wounded to be effective in the Nazi war machine. With only high school German, he makes poignant and life-saving connections with a few who seem, despite the horrors they have inflicted on each other, to understand their common humanity. Resurrection is a strong anti-war statement stemming from the only honest indicator, personal experience.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert E. Gajdusek (1925–2003) was a leading scholar on Ernest Hemingway and is the author of Hemingway in His Own Country (University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), Hemingway and Joyce: A Study of Debt and Payment, and Hemingway's Paris.

Review:

“Gajdusek’s compelling memoir, Resurrection, A War Journey, is not strictly about facts. Rather, it is his earnest, groping attempt―after more than 50 years―to overpower his ‘recalcitrant mind’ and confront the horrors he has not been able to write about. Using a peripatetic style to get at the truth, Gajdusek jumps from World War II archival material to poetry, short stories, and vivid, terrifying, and sometimes surreal reflections. . . . Like a frantic ancient mariner, Gajdusek transfixes readers with his searing, honest memoir. He invites us, he writes in the preface, ‘to a place you have not been’ to discover ‘what of value can be resurrected from the dying and suffering.’ ” (San Francisco Chronicle)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0268016607
• ISBN 13: 9780268016609
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 234