Paul Fussell, who died on May 23, would have been among the first to point out that mourning the death of an 88 year old is not a great use of your time, especially if that 88 year old led a full life that included children and professorships, a National Book Award and a bronze star. Fussell himself spent most of his life engaged in a more pointed act of mourning, for the living as well as the dead of the great wars. He was a clever and prolific critic, but it was the emotional intensity of his writing—his fierce insistence that literature cannot be divorced from life—that has caused many of us who never met him to mourn the loss of a teacher.
Read Full Article »
