Birdsong

Reference 1 and reference 2 being a recent Christmas present, now consumed.

We did the film first, in two or three sittings, with Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Wraysford catching our eye as the chap who played the star struck third assistant producer in the rather jolly film at reference 3. A film which also features Chief Inspector Japp of ITV3 fame.

A war film packaged up with a romance (most of which took place a few years before the war in question), with one connection being Wraysford who leads in both parts and another being Amiens which figures in both parts. Perhaps the idea was something for everyone.

A film which was entirely watchable, but in which I found the continual switching around in time rather tiresome: I have always like my films to move steadily forwards.

The book came with educational packing. Billed as a Vintage Future Classic. An introduction by the author, written for this edition. Almost exactly 500 pages of text. Closed with a readers' guide by the author. Perhaps, eying the 'Inspector Calls' phenomenon, he is targeting the market for set books in schools and universities - for which see reference 6.

A book which is rather too long and which is divided in seven parts of varying lengths. I admit to a certain amount of skimming. Some of the shorter and later parts concern a granddaughter of Wraysford who is moved to stir up her grandfather's past and being lucky enough to turn up his diary; a sub-plot which the film omits. The film also omits, elides or otherwise tweaks quite a lot of details some of which I thought important - but overall the film is a pretty fair rendition of the book. Leaving aside the important thought from reference 7, turned up in connection with Blessed's film version of Lear, that an adaptation should be judged on its own merits, not given marks out of ten according to how well it reproduces the nominal source.

A book which rather smells of the library. Of a great deal of research on materials from the first world war, not altogether successfully patched together into a novel.

Apart from the romance, perhaps a third of the text, most of the book is about two interlocking groups of soldiers: a company of infantrymen who like to fight above ground and a company of tunnellers who prefer to stay down under. And the tensions that this sometimes caused. A small fact here being that the tunnellers, while part of the army, were not quite full-on soldiers, and at least some of them joined up for the pay, better than that which was obtainable at home at the time. Another small fact might be that quite a lot of people get very scared about being in confined spaces, never mind underground. What happened to the ones who happened to be infantrymen, but who were still sent down the tunnels? I associate to a short story of Lawrence's about a solder in the German army who cracks up by being made to climb a tall ladder, vertigo notwithstanding. A plight I can sympathise with. See reference 10.

Quite a lot of the mess of blood and guts which results from bits of shells hitting people. Some of the romantic scenes are a bit purple in that way too, not altogether to my taste.

Quite a lot of text given to how all this blood and guts - a lot of it once belonging to people with whom one might have lived in close quarters with for some time - deadens one. There is little talk of suicide but one imagines that there must have been quite a few - guessing, a lot more than there were executions for what was called cowardice or something of that sort. Which just for the record, in the UK army totalled just over 300, say one a week. While the total deaths in combat were of the order of 750,000.

So an interesting read. But mostly without the literary merit of the various famous books written much nearer the time - for example those of Ernst Jünger and Robert Graves. Maybe these last aren't messy enough for modern taste. Maybe too much of the smell of the playing fields of Eton about them. See, for example, reference 9.

By a lucky chance, the NYRB had a piece in its 13th February number on what is now called the post traumatic stress syndrome, as it affects fighting soldiers, references 4 and 5. I learn that people - particularly medical people in armies - have known about this syndrome, under various names, for a very long time, although it has taken a while for fighting generals - people like Patten of the ivory handled revolvers - to come round. People, no matter how well suited to the work, now matter how well trained, start to fall apart if kept in combat for too long. With the rule of thumb given here being that 200 days is about the limit - although I feel sure that I remember a much shorter period, say 100 days, from somewhere else. Things can be stretched out a bit with regular breaks from combat. And in the US they now try to apply a rule of thumb which says three years back at home for every year at war - a rule which they have been hard put to stick to in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In which connection, I think there were also 30 mission tours for bomber crews in both the RAF and USAF in the second world war. A fact I need to check.

Reference 1: Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - 1993. Vintage 2005.

Reference 2: Birdsong - Eddie Redmayne, Clémence Poésy, Philip Martin, Abi Morgan - 2012.

Reference 3: My Week with Marilyn - Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne - 2011.

Reference 4: The human mind was not made for war - David Oshinsky - 2020. Being a review in the NYRB of reference 5. My source for the snap above: 'Robert Chamberlain, a veteran of two tours to Iraq and a Rhodes scholar who has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, on the day he was promoted to the rank of army major, Brooklyn, 2011'.

Reference 5: Signature Wounds: the untold story of the military's mental health crisis - David Kieran - 2019.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-inspector-calls-again.html.

Reference 7: Screen Adaptations: Shakespeare's 'King Lear': A Close Study of the Relationship Between Text and Film Paperback - Yvonne Griggs - 2009.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/blessed-lear.html. Where Griggs is unfortunately spelt Grigg.

Reference 9: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/11/pour-le-merite.html.

Reference 10: The thorn in the flesh - D. H. Lawrence - 1914. So written, as it happens, just before the first world war of the present book, by someone who was far too unhealthy to fight in it. My next port of call.