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The Wasted Generation
This is a diary written by a soldier who fought in World War I, and it covers both his experiences and his feelings over several years of fighting in France on the Western front. The title, of course, is a reference to the millions of young men who were killed during what was to that time history’s bloodiest war.
- GenresFiction
330 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1921
9 people want to read
About the author
Owen Johnson
39 books7 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Owen McMahon Johnson was an American writer best remembered for his stories and novels cataloguing the educational and personal growth of the fictional character Dink Stover. The "Lawrenceville Stories" (The Prodigious Hickey, The Tennessee Shad, The Varmint, Skippy Bedelle, The Hummingbird), set in the well-known prep school, invite comparison with Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co. A 1950 film, The Happy Years, and a 1987 PBS mini-series, The Lawrenceville Stories, were based on them.
Owen McMahon Johnson was an American writer best remembered for his stories and novels cataloguing the educational and personal growth of the fictional character Dink Stover. The "Lawrenceville Stories" (The Prodigious Hickey, The Tennessee Shad, The Varmint, Skippy Bedelle, The Hummingbird), set in the well-known prep school, invite comparison with Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co. A 1950 film, The Happy Years, and a 1987 PBS mini-series, The Lawrenceville Stories, were based on them.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 17, 2016
I had never heard of Owen Johnson before seeing this title at Project Gutenberg. According to Wiki, he wrote a wildly popular series of novels about life at a prep school, earning comparisons to Kipling. But all this was before the First World War, when Johnson became a war correspondent for the New York Times and Collier's magazine. Gutenberg has a few of his earlier titles available. I will be interested to read one or two and see how the styles changed from Boy to Man. Because this book, The Wasted Generation, is a philosophical study of one man's groping progress to maturity,
looking deep within himself and deep into the world around him, trying to make sense of it all, trying to see where things went wrong and what to do to make them right again. I cannot help but think that Johnson dealt with all of the issues he has his main character David Littledale puzzle through. This idea is what seems to me so sadly intriguing about WWI: it completely changed the direction society was heading. For all the people who expected life to remain forever a certain way, this had to have been a huge shock. Johnson explores that idea and much more in a way that gripped me from start to finish.
We meet David Littledale when he is behind the lines recuperating from injuries received at the battle of Verdun. He is an American who was in France before the war began, a member of the privileged class who spent his time as most young people of his station did: partying, searching for entertainment, trying so hard not to be bored with life that the pursuit of stimulation itself became boring. When the war began David joined the Foreign Legion more for the excitement of doing so than for any other reason, but he quickly began to see that much more was involved than he had ever thought about: the spirit of the people, the love of country, the bond between men of all walks of life and their ability to work together to protect something they love. David has decided to write an honest journal of his life and experiences, and the key here is his wish to be honest, to hide nothing from himself or from whoever might someday read the diary.
This is not so much a soldier's war story full of battle scenes, as a man's reflecting on his entire life, sharing how he arrived at being the David he is when we meet him, and then following the stream of life to the David he eventually becomes. The trenches are here in short scenes that will make you cry, but the War is more of a lurking presence pulling the world to pieces in one hand and bringing it together in a new way in the other.
As the story progresses, David is granted a furlough to visit his father who has had a stroke. America is still not in the war, but there are businessmen on the homebound ship who are reaping profits from the carnage, and their conversations are fuel for the debate in David's mind. There is also a mysterious woman, fleeing France in great sorrow, obviously noble but wishing to be anonymous. Who is she, why is she there, what has happened in her life, how will she respond to David's empathy and what will be her influence in his life? Some of the answers are revealed while David is with his family in Connecticut. Others come in a Hold Your Breath scene at the end of the book when David has returned to France and America enters the war at last.
I think Johnson did a masterful job of transferring what he must have seen and felt while Over There into this thought provoking novel. He compares the Old World attitudes with The New; he has his characters debate the good and bad points of Socialism, Nationalism, Pacifism. But none of these debates are preachy or boring or skip-worthy. They were vitally important to David and the other characters in the book, as vitally important as they were to the world in general at the time. And probably should still be so today. Because I think it is pretty clear that none of these issues have been properly settled.
Johnson's wasted generation was brought up in privilege, educated and given every opportunity to become leaders, but they did not take up the task. They just wanted to be entertained, they did not think of their responsibility to the world, just of their own pleasure. Sounds familiar to me. How many more wasted generations will there be before the world becomes what it could and should be?
looking deep within himself and deep into the world around him, trying to make sense of it all, trying to see where things went wrong and what to do to make them right again. I cannot help but think that Johnson dealt with all of the issues he has his main character David Littledale puzzle through. This idea is what seems to me so sadly intriguing about WWI: it completely changed the direction society was heading. For all the people who expected life to remain forever a certain way, this had to have been a huge shock. Johnson explores that idea and much more in a way that gripped me from start to finish.
We meet David Littledale when he is behind the lines recuperating from injuries received at the battle of Verdun. He is an American who was in France before the war began, a member of the privileged class who spent his time as most young people of his station did: partying, searching for entertainment, trying so hard not to be bored with life that the pursuit of stimulation itself became boring. When the war began David joined the Foreign Legion more for the excitement of doing so than for any other reason, but he quickly began to see that much more was involved than he had ever thought about: the spirit of the people, the love of country, the bond between men of all walks of life and their ability to work together to protect something they love. David has decided to write an honest journal of his life and experiences, and the key here is his wish to be honest, to hide nothing from himself or from whoever might someday read the diary.
This is not so much a soldier's war story full of battle scenes, as a man's reflecting on his entire life, sharing how he arrived at being the David he is when we meet him, and then following the stream of life to the David he eventually becomes. The trenches are here in short scenes that will make you cry, but the War is more of a lurking presence pulling the world to pieces in one hand and bringing it together in a new way in the other.
As the story progresses, David is granted a furlough to visit his father who has had a stroke. America is still not in the war, but there are businessmen on the homebound ship who are reaping profits from the carnage, and their conversations are fuel for the debate in David's mind. There is also a mysterious woman, fleeing France in great sorrow, obviously noble but wishing to be anonymous. Who is she, why is she there, what has happened in her life, how will she respond to David's empathy and what will be her influence in his life? Some of the answers are revealed while David is with his family in Connecticut. Others come in a Hold Your Breath scene at the end of the book when David has returned to France and America enters the war at last.
I think Johnson did a masterful job of transferring what he must have seen and felt while Over There into this thought provoking novel. He compares the Old World attitudes with The New; he has his characters debate the good and bad points of Socialism, Nationalism, Pacifism. But none of these debates are preachy or boring or skip-worthy. They were vitally important to David and the other characters in the book, as vitally important as they were to the world in general at the time. And probably should still be so today. Because I think it is pretty clear that none of these issues have been properly settled.
Johnson's wasted generation was brought up in privilege, educated and given every opportunity to become leaders, but they did not take up the task. They just wanted to be entertained, they did not think of their responsibility to the world, just of their own pleasure. Sounds familiar to me. How many more wasted generations will there be before the world becomes what it could and should be?
Want to read
September 17, 2019The author's writing style is vibrantly descriptive, immediately drawing the reader in and painting a picture of his location and feelings.
Read this book for free through Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47910/...
Read this book for free through Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47910/...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews