"The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two by Studs Terkel (review)

Book Reviews165 the people portrayed in these tales. Happiness is of nearly impossible attainment . Frustration constantly predominates over satisfaction, be it on the individual level or the collective. These are stories about a dispossessed nation whose feeling of alienation has carried over into the lives of its citizens. In her introduction, Marie-Claire Biais rightly emphasizes the theme of the exile in this literature. Upsurgings of revolt and efforts to escape normally fail. Each individual remains a prisoner of his own solitude. Communication does not function. Ironically, the only authentic couple in the volume, Albert and Marie in Ringuet's "The Heritage," are both rejected by society as a whole and only turn to each other because each has no one else in the world. In all, we are presented here with a highly pessimistic picture of human life. The FrenchCanadians seem to share with Unamuno's countrymen a "tragic sentiment of life." There is not a total absence of hope, however, for there exist fleeting instances of humor, the desire to know, and the wish to change things for the better. The reader is impressed, whether through previous knowledge or from reading the brief but informative biographies provided for each author, by their admirable versatility. Several of them, like Grandbois, Hébert, Pamphile Lemay, and Louis Frechette, are equally or better renowned as poets, while Tremblay is Quebec's most celebrated playwright. Relatively few of them have been full-time writers. They have instead pursued successful parallel careers in teaching, broadcasting, and even medicine. Marie-Claire Blais's introduction is a perceptive survey of the evolution of the short story in Québec as seen from the perspective of one of its leading contemporary practitioners. Hers is a militant approach which decries the religious, sexual, and racial inhibitions of Quebec's past and encourages the moral and intellectual liberation ofthe present. However, despite her emphasis on the social and cultural taboos which held them back, the nineteenthcentury writers represented here impress us by the forcefulness and originality of their style. "Rose Latulipe" by Aubert de Gaspé has the stern puritanism of a tale by Hawthorne, while the humorous treatment of the fantastical in Frechette's "Tom Cariboo" is worthy of Mark Twain. The plot of Lemay's "Blood and Gold" anticipates that of Camus's play Le Malentendu. Of the stories contained in this collection, the outstanding ones are those by Albert Laberge, Ringuet, Roger Lemelin, Ferron, Hubert Aquin, Biais, and, ofcourse, Hébert. Their tales are not only noteworthy works of fiction in their own right but true microcosms of the art and vision of their creators. JAMES P. GILROY University of Denver STUDS TERKEL. "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. 589 p. You have seen Life magazine's glossy World War Two. Amid truly grim prospects of warships burning in the Atlantic and bodies of Marines washing up on Pacific beaches, young American men appear in photographs that seem chosen to typify a clean-cut, self-reliant GI. Even wounded soldiers and airmen cheerfully display scars and stumps as if war were merely a painless 166Book Reviews sport. Advertisements that blend with these ingenuous scenes show GIs on leave, their faces clean after Barbasol shaves, their cover-girl dates drinking Hires root beer. Some of the ads patently herald an ideal Americanism: "All about you are decent people eager to help you. They'll feed you ifyou're hungry and carry you ifyou're tired. You can be ofany race and faith. They don't care; they're Americans" (Life 3 Jan. 1944). Yes, indeed. Those Americans were having a grand time in "the last good war" while disseminating ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. "The Good War," Studs Terkel's latest "oral history," is not Life magazine; it is not glossy, and it is honest. Ideals are missing. These interviews with the famous and forgotten players of World War Two affirm that the times for Americans were grand; they do not, however, provide evidence for American enthusiasm for equality and fraternity. In fact, these voices which remember days of war and change strike a consistent chord denying...