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Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography

by Robert Graves

4.01 · rating details · 1,470 ratings · 135 reviews

The quintessential memoir of the generation of Englishmen who suffered in WWI is among the bitterest autobiographies ever written. Robert Graves's stripped-to-the-bone prose seethes with contempt for his class, his country, his military superiors & the civilians who mindlessly cheered the carnage from the safety of home. His portrait of the stupidity & petty cruelties ende...more

Paperback, 347 pages

Published February 1st 1958 by Anchor Books (first published 1929)

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Aug 30, 2010

Teresa rated it

The lines that have stayed with me after finishing this book are those Graves wrote about his time in Oxford after the war, when he was experiencing vivid 'daydreams' of trench warfare. It's obvious now that those 'dreams' were flashbacks -- I'm guessing the term hadn't been invented yet -- and Graves says they were always of his first four months in the trenches, that his 'feeling-apparatus' (his words) had shut down after that time.

As a schoolboy, Graves suffered under the herd me...more

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Mar 02, 2010

Tyler rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Tyler by: WWI Bibliography

Herbert Marcuse describes in One-dimensional Man a world where clashing ideas are held together in a way that makes them impossible to evaluate. We see this with the current PBS ads which, in service to some obscene aesthetic, combine classical opera with film of a napalm attack on Vietnam. A kindred juxtaposition makes the technique of Goodbye to All That recognizably modern. Graves relates his life in a succession of caricatures that shift between the comic and the horrific. Young Graves fa...moreHerbert Marcuse describes in One-dimensional Man a world where clashing ideas are held together in a way that makes them impossible to evaluate. We see this with the current PBS ads which, in service to some obscene aesthetic, combine classical opera with film of a napalm attack on Vietnam. A kindred juxtaposition makes the technique of Goodbye to All That recognizably modern. Graves relates his life in a succession of caricatures that shift between the comic and the horrific. Young Graves faces two hurdles: British boarding school and World War I. It’s his accounts of both that bring this book fame. But is it really all that?

In upper class schools for boys we find, as the story begins, bastions of intramural sex that administrators ignore. Graves takes a partner, Dick, as a matter of inveterate custom; his tone tells us it would be in bad form to register much more than a raised eyebrow over this. True, it’s not as graphic as Céline’s frank account of British boarding school in Death on the Installment Plan. But later comes a kind of punch line. Dick gets arrested for coming on to an officer. Graves denounces him, realizing, apparently for the first time, that Dick really is “like that.” I’m not gay, Graves tells us, but my boyfriend is. Having torn the mask off British boarding school, Graves, we find, has adapted to its carnal secrets quite nicely, thank you. Wickedly funny, sir. Take a bow but please, no encore.

Adapting to anything is the link that gets us from sex to war. One moment finds Graves killing Krauts and tripping into rotting corpses; next thing you know he and Siegfried Sassoon are sitting in the grass reciting poetry. Graves plays on this contrast between Britain’s home front dream of war and France’s reality. These absurd transitions take events in stride without regard to their moral status. Graves chronicles them. Conclusions are left to the reader.

A light touch along the line of Catch-22 helps sidestep the in any case inexplicable enormity of the Great War. But at this point we run up against the circularity of the author’s worldview. Implicit in the book is a concession that the system that causes war is its own raison d’etre. This undertone weakens the farce we might otherwise notice. The memoir is in part a comedy of evil; but Graves’s comical approach, because of his dry class humor, often turns a fuming crime into a desiccated absurdity. It’s hard to read the theatricality the way the author may have meant it.

A puritanical upper class conformist, Graves is content to be part of the state of affairs he excoriates. The book's light moments rely on a satire of manners that plays to his immense vanity; the rich details of a catered life flesh out various sketches – every faux pas made, the style of the place settings, his illustrious friends and family, the weave of the many strings he pulls. He drops names with astonishing recall, and I certainly can’t deny his entitlements. Yet it’s hard to effectively attack this system from within. The sheer scale of the evil doesn’t yield easily to jaunty farce. Readers in our day can only too well see World War II just dying to climb out from these pages.

Fans of satire might disagree with me as to how effectively it works here. But I can safely say that this is not the scorching declamation of injustice one might be led to expect. Even so, this important war memoir received special attention in the elegantly conceived The Great War and Modern Memory. Graves’s book is in fact well structured and well written, containing all the effects that make for good storytelling. It’s a precise read that doesn’t tarry too long on any one point and an unexpected page turner.

The particular attraction of Goodbye to All That is for students of World War I, fans of memoirs, people who like poetry (although the book contains none) and poets, and anyone curious about the scandal endemic to boarding schools. On the other hand, readers outside these categories may find in this autobiography an insufferable litany of manners, titles, class, ego and conformity. Proceed, but with realistic expectations.
(less)

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Nov 26, 2007

Nat rated it

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What follows is my favorite passage from Goodbye to All That. It begins with Graves's delivery of absurdity in deadpan style:

"Many of the patients at Osborne were neurasthenic and should have been in a special neurasthenic hospital. A.A. Milne was there, as a subaltern in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and in his least humorous vein. One Vernon Bartlett, of the Hampshire Regiment, decided with me that something new must be started. So we founded the 'Royal Albert Society', it...moreWhat follows is my favorite passage from Goodbye to All That. It begins with Graves's delivery of absurdity in deadpan style:

"Many of the patients at Osborne were neurasthenic and should have been in a special neurasthenic hospital. A.A. Milne was there, as a subaltern in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and in his least humorous vein. One Vernon Bartlett, of the Hampshire Regiment, decided with me that something new must be started. So we founded the 'Royal Albert Society', its pretended aim being to revive interest in the life and times of the Prince Consort. My regalia as president consisted of a Scottish dirk, Hessian boots, and and pair of side-whiskers. Official business might not proceed until the announcement had been duly made that 'The whiskers are on the table'. Membership was open only to officers who professed themselves students of the life and works of the Prince Consort; those who had been born in the province of Alberta in Canada; those who had resided for six months or longer by the banks of the Albert Nyanza; those who held the Albert Medal for saving life; or those who were linked with the Prince Consort's memory in any other signal way. This must have been the first of the now popular burlesques of Victorianism. The members were instructed to report at each meeting reminiscences collected from old palace-servants and Osborne cottagers, throwing light on the human side of the Consort's life. We had fifteen members and ate quantities of strawberries".

Then it gets even more absurd:

"On one occasion, a dozen officers came in to join the society, professing to have the necessary qualifications. One claimed to be the grandson of the man who had built the Albert Memorial; one had worked at the Albert Docks; and one actually did possess the Albert Medal for saving life; the others were all interested students. They submitted quietly at first to the ceremonies and business, but it was soon apparent that they had come to break up the society; they were, in fact, most of them drunk. They began giving indecent accounts of the Prince Consort's private life, alleging that they could substantiate them with photographic evidence. Bartlett and I got worried; it was not that sort of society. Therefore, as president, I rose and told in an improved version the story which had won the 1914 Aldershot for the filthiest story of the year. I linked it up with the Prince Consort by saying that he had heard it from the lips of John Brown, the famous Balmoral ghillie, in whose pawky humor Queen Victoria used to find such delight; and that, having prevented him from sleeping for three days and nights, it had been a contributory cause of his premature death. The interrupters threw up their hands, in shocked surrender, and walked out" (pp.253-254). (less)

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Dec 14, 2011

Tamora Pierce rated it

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Shelves: adult, nonfiction

This is the autobiography by poet, novelist, essayist, you name it Robert Graves, author of I, CLAUDIUS and CLAUDIUS THE GOD, THE WHITE GODDESS, translations of the Greek myths and legends (which I found *very* educational and read before Bulfinch and Edith Hamilton), and large numbers of other things I cannot detail. It begins with his childhood, his ancestry--assorted illustrious writers and ministers on the British side and minor German nobility--and his school history, up until the outbreak...moreThis is the autobiography by poet, novelist, essayist, you name it Robert Graves, author of I, CLAUDIUS and CLAUDIUS THE GOD, THE WHITE GODDESS, translations of the Greek myths and legends (which I found *very* educational and read before Bulfinch and Edith Hamilton), and large numbers of other things I cannot detail. It begins with his childhood, his ancestry--assorted illustrious writers and ministers on the British side and minor German nobility--and his school history, up until the outbreak of WWI.

The bulk of the book details his war experience as a young officer sent into the trenches in the region of the Somme, describing minutely life as an officer among the men, billeted among the French when not living in trenches themselves, dealing with the development of gas warfare, the curious relationships the troops had with their German counterparts, friendships, leaves, sickness and injuries, and deaths. Death is the principal factor in Graves' service in the war, with one in three men wounded or killed and a battalion virtually wiped out and replaced every 4-6 months in a war that killed most of a generation of Europe's young men. It's the most vivid account of a war on the ground I've ever read. He also details his wounds following *the* Battle of the Somme and his post-war PTSD (and that of his fellow soldiers), describing the effect his "nerves" has on his day-to-day life, family, marriage, and career. He also talks about the notable men he meets during and after the war, men like Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and T.E. Lawrence, among others.

The book is ironic, bitter, funny, horrifying, and undeniably real. Graves doesn't try to make himself pretty, either in his physical descriptions of himself or in his descriptions of his thinking and his behavior. He makes it clear he is fumbling--through school, through the ranks of officers, through the war and after it. The one thing he is certain of is his writing. He needs to do it and he hangs onto it when the world around him really is going crazy.(less)

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Aug 23, 2007

Eric rated it

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All the chickenhawks who think war is wonderful and glorious should read this book. Then go enlist.

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May 25, 2011

Jeanette rated it

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Shelves: audio, biography-memoir, four-star-nonfiction, nonfiction

I probably would have liked this better if I'd been able to read it in print. Alas, most libraries don't have it these days, so I was lucky enough to get the abridged audio edition from my library. It's only four disks, and the fourth disk is far and away the most interesting. The earlier disks are filled with the repetitive miseries of World War I from the soldier's perspective, and also his strange upbringing as an English schoolboy.

The fourth disk provides a lot more variety. He...more

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Aug 30, 2010

Karen rated it

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Shelves: biography-memoir

In 1929 Robert Graves (aged 33) went abroad, "resolved never to make
England my home again;" which explains the title. However this
autobiography does little to illuminate that decision: in an epilogue
he says that "a conditioning in the Protestant morality of the English
governing classes, though qualified by mixed blood, a rebellious
nature, and an overriding poetic obsession, is not easily outgrown."
Nor is it easily escaped when writing about...more

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Mar 12, 2008

Mike Schneider rated it

What strikes me about this book -- after the descriptions of WW I trench warfare, which give me a sensual feel for this war as does nothing else I've read, including All Quiet on the Western Front . . .

What strikes me is Graves' tone toward his material -- it's an epic, amazing tale, I think. Greatly tragic. And yet his British stiff upper lip, in a way, never quivers. He delivers all of it -- the whole story of young men dying horribly, and for nothing much beyond empty nationalist...more

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Jan 29, 2011

Tony rated it

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Shelves: biography

Graves, Robert. GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: An Autobiography. (1929; revised 2nd ed. 1957). ****. From the back cover: “Robert Graves left his native England for Majorca shortly after World War I and, except for infrequent visits, has never returned since. But in this autobiography written at the age of thirty-three – youth, the war, and Oxford behind him – Graves says goodbye to more than simply England and his English family and friends. For the war ended a way of life. It ended the 19th cen...moreGraves, Robert. GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: An Autobiography. (1929; revised 2nd ed. 1957). ****. From the back cover: “Robert Graves left his native England for Majorca shortly after World War I and, except for infrequent visits, has never returned since. But in this autobiography written at the age of thirty-three – youth, the war, and Oxford behind him – Graves says goodbye to more than simply England and his English family and friends. For the war ended a way of life. It ended the 19th century and in this book – a classic of its kind – Graves gives us in parallel accounts the end of his own innocence and that of his world.” Graves starts out his story telling of his youth and the various schools that he attended. He moved from school to school because of either academic reasons or social ones. When he finally did manage to get his certificate, he wound up getting a scholarship to Oxford. At Oxford, he was a loner. He didn’t mingle and was not very good at sports. He did take up boxing – not a popular sport for students – in an attempt to learn self defense against the ragging of the other students. Early homosexual encounters are hinted at, but not gone into in detail. His lover was a younger student named David. When war broke out, he entered the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and was sent to the French theater, where he spent his time in the forward trenches. While in France, he met Siegrfried Sassoon, and two became life-long friends. Graves was later wounded by shell fragments and was reported dead. He was sent back to England for recuperation and used that opportunity to let family and friends know that he was alive. After his recovery, he was sent back to France – again to the front. On this tour, he contracted severe bronchitis and was returned to England once again for recovery. He chose to go to Oxford. While recuperating, he took on a staff teaching job, and met the current Oxford crowd, including: Aldous Huxley, Philip and Lady Ottoline Morrell, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, and Bertrand Russell. Later he also met Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy. About that time, Sassoon published his letter affirming his conscientious objector beliefs, and Graves had to organize his defense in order to keep Sassoon out of jail or worse. He meets and marries Nancy and they have a little girl, Jennie. He catches influenza – like so many around the world – but manages to survive. By this time, he is fit only for home service, but he is posted to Ireland. When he ultimately demobs from Ireland – under questionable circumstances – he goes with his family back to Oxford. He meets T. E. Lawrence, with whom he develops a life-long friendship, and Thomas Hardy. He and his family can barely survive on his Oxford pay, even augmented by income from his poetry, and he seeks and obtains a teaching post in Cairo, Egypt. He ultimately can’t stand it and moves with his family first to Gibralter. Later, he moves to Majorca, and that’s where his chronicle stops. In this second revised edition, Graves provides a new introduction and an afterwords in addition to adding and/or deleting several chapters from his original version. Recommended.(less)

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Jan 28, 2011

Tony rated it

Shelves: das-nach-fruct-book-club, nonfiction

I generally hate memoirs, and avoid the genre as much as possible -- so when my bookgroup picked this as the next selection, I was pretty crestfallen. But I held my nose and started reading it, and lo and behold, found myself drawn in right away. I certainly knew of the book's reputation as a classic account of World War I and kind of epitaph for a generation, but had no inkling that Graves would be able to write about his childhood and school years in such a compelling manner. Granted, it's onl...moreI generally hate memoirs, and avoid the genre as much as possible -- so when my bookgroup picked this as the next selection, I was pretty crestfallen. But I held my nose and started reading it, and lo and behold, found myself drawn in right away. I certainly knew of the book's reputation as a classic account of World War I and kind of epitaph for a generation, but had no inkling that Graves would be able to write about his childhood and school years in such a compelling manner. Granted, it's only compelling to those who have an interest in how prewar English society operated, especially in the upper classes, but as a portrait of that particular time and place, it's certainly a fine example.

The book really picks up, however, when Graves enlists in the Army and heads off to war (interestingly, he enlists to postpone his higher education). I gather that what made his account so groundbreaking was his scathing honesty and apparent lack of embellishment in recounting the horrors and idiocy he witnessed (particularly memorable is his description of a bungled early attempt at using poison gas). Although the mind still reels at the carnage, it reels even further at the prospect that teenage academics such as Graves were suddenly thrust into positions where they commanded other men in a war zone. There's a lot of very interesting detail about daily life in the trenches, meals, equipment, and so forth. But plenty of drama too -- notably an episode in which Graves is left to die (and indeed his family is notified), only to eventually recover. I would assume that pretty much any contemporary reader of the book would be well aware of the catastrophic prosecution of WWI, but Graves's book provides a direct view into what that meant on a day-to-day basis.

The post-war years, on the other hand, feel very perfunctory and tacked on. They unspool as a series of episodes with very little connective tissue, and without the drama of youth or the larger import of the war, they largely fail to engage. As a series of name-dropping encounters with various eminent literary figures of the day, they work fine, but there's clearly much more drama to his failing marriage than he cares to disclose here. I gather from further reading that the memoir has been substantially revised since its initial publication, and that Graves may have embellished certain aspects in order to appeal to a broader readership. Whatever the case may be, it is a fairly interesting peek into a bygone era, with special appeal to those interested in World War I. I can't say I loved it, but I certainly enjoyed it much more than I expected to.(less)

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Mar 31, 2011

Keith Michael rated it

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i wish that i had read this before Hemingway's a moveable feast. i feel like the two complement each other very well as examples of cultural change during the WWI era. Graves bitterly details the trauma of WWI and the soldier's task of readjustment to society. Hemingway's characters are readjusted, but act strangely etherized and always emotionally wounded from the war. Graves's harrowing descriptions of trench warfare and his concomitant dissociative disorder help to explain the origins of Hem...more

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Jul 31, 2011

Stuart rated it

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Shelves: biography

This is Robert Graves' autobiographical story of his experiences of World War 1. Perhaps strangely, I didn't realize that this is the Robert Graves who wrote "I, Claudius". I had thought of him as a poet along with Wilfrid Owen. I read the book because he was mentioned in the bio I read of Lawrence of Arabia. And Lawrence gets a chapter to himself in this book. Written in 1929, WW1 was fresh in Graves' mind when he wrote it. It has a different tone from Siegfried Sasson and E M Rema...more

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Feb 04, 2009

John rated it

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Shelves: history

The book is the autobiography of Robert Graves, an author probably best known for the novel, "I Claudius." The book deals with only the first thirty or so years of his life, and focuses primarily on his participation in the trenches in France in WWI.
The man lived in quite a different world from ours: patriotism was not taken lightly. For example, the book was apparently considered nearly treasonous for its antiwar stance when it appeared in the late 1920's, though it seems q...more

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Dec 22, 2010

Alex rated it

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Shelves: war, biography

In this book, the author of "I, Claudius" recounts the story of his early life in a frank & engaging narrative. His boyhood experiences in the English public school system make fascinating reading (one of his tutors was George Mallory of Everest fame) but the heart of the book is his account of his service as a young officer in the Royal Welch Regiment during the First World War. He survived the early bloody debacles of 1915 only to be flung, in the following year, into the hell of the...more

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Sep 23, 2011

Miss GP rated it

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I found this book somewhat disappointing. I've been reading a lot of war books lately, including some really fine autobiographies, and I can't say that I've enjoyed this one as much as several others. It is similar to All Quiet on the Western Front, but it lacks the heart of that book. Graves really sticks to what happened. There's very little sense of how it made him feel at the time, and also very little description. I wasn't able to paint much of a mental picture of his situation, and did...more

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Dec 26, 2011

Michael rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction

It's often hard to keep your appraisal of a book separate from your prior expectations. "Goodbye to All That," for much of its length, is an amazing document of a junior officer's experience of World War I. Since junior officers didn't tend to survive that war, a lucid, frank, and articulate account of life in the trenches -- literally -- is a valuable document.

Unfortunately, I was pointed towards the book by its reputation as a bitingly funny attack on and rejection of the...moreIt's often hard to keep your appraisal of a book separate from your prior expectations. "Goodbye to All That," for much of its length, is an amazing document of a junior officer's experience of World War I. Since junior officers didn't tend to survive that war, a lucid, frank, and articulate account of life in the trenches -- literally -- is a valuable document.

Unfortunately, I was pointed towards the book by its reputation as a bitingly funny attack on and rejection of the entire British, or European, class system as it existed before The Great War. And that it isn't. Graves is, first of all, not bitingly funny. He gets an occasional good line off, but he is on the whole a workmanlike and rather spare prose craftsman. His wit is dry, but not abundant. And although he is perhaps a bit Bohemian, fancies himself blunt-spoken, and reports himself as able to get on well with the lower classes, Graves is through and through a member of the "ruling class" from start to finish. He doesn't even really try to tell us otherwise; his decision to say "good-bye to all that" and exile himself in Malta is by his own account mostly about his failed marriage. In a forward written decades later, Graves frankly admits that he wrote his memoirs to a formula he thought would sell, in order that he could make some money. That is charmingly cynical, perhaps, but it's not a very convincing rejection of the social order.

Readers hoping for a broadside against The Establishment will be disappointed to find that the post-War chapters of the book are downright cluttered with name-dropping, alternating between unremarkable stories of family life and detailed reports of everything Thomas Hardy, T.E. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, and other literary notables said on the occasions that he rubbed elbows with them. They didn't say much of interest, really.

Highly recommended for those interested in the First World War. Skim the pre-War and post-War chapters unless you are related to Robert Graves and are interested in family history.(less)

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Dec 11, 2008

Katy rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction

Can I just say how shocked I am that NO one has reviewed this one?

I will admit, orginally written in 1928(ish) and then updated in the 1950s, its not exactly a page turner by today's standers. For the time though, I can only imagine what it must have been like to be glued to its pages.

I picked this up for two reasons. 1)I'm a sucker for British History and 2) you can't read anything about Robert Graves (who is famous for his poetry) without seeing a mention of the book th...moreCan I just say how shocked I am that NO one has reviewed this one?

I will admit, orginally written in 1928(ish) and then updated in the 1950s, its not exactly a page turner by today's standers. For the time though, I can only imagine what it must have been like to be glued to its pages.

I picked this up for two reasons. 1)I'm a sucker for British History and 2) you can't read anything about Robert Graves (who is famous for his poetry) without seeing a mention of the book that first coined the phrase, "Goodbye to All That."

That said, I admit that in the middle of this one I found myself wondering why I had picked it up at all. Its a WWI autobiography, the non-fictional Hemingway. Graves, isn't falling in love with nurses or driving ambulances, he's steping over headless bodies on his way into the trench and wonder why the guy next to him hasn't moved for 5 hours.

Still, he offers a unique persective. Graves was raised in the British boarding schools and groomed to be the perfect Bristish gentalmen, but his mother was German. He spent many holidays on the conteniante as a child. The most interesting part of his whole tail is his ability to like his childhood memories to the battle field. He is very aware of the fact that his uncle is a German General and his cousines were killed by British soilders.

I think that since of familuarity explodes the general consenus that WWI was the biggest waist of a war ever fought on British Soil. As a child of the 1980s, it is almost impossible to read the first chapter of the World War stories without being tainted by the second. This book allows you to do that though. It is written through the eyes of young man who has never seen a war like this before, and is sure he never will again.

The other really revealing thing is the death toll of this. The true since of how an entire generation was whole effected by the conflict. 1 and 4 of Grave's Prep school classmates were killed on the battlefield and of the 3 left standing, 2 of them were injured at least once, often more. That is staggering. It isn't something that we can relate to at all really.

At yet, with all the carnage going on. All the death. The gas attacks. Graves doesn't sent on his high horse and preach to the chior. He mearly tells his story. He introduces us to the characters, lays out the tales of time they spent to gether, then almost as an after thought adds..."He was killed at..." or "He was later blinded by...".

Anyway. It is worth it to trudge through this one because it gives such a unique perspective. You can't help but come out different on the other side. You do have to be in the mood though. (less)

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Jun 01, 2010

Gary Land rated it

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This is another book that has been on my to read list for a long time. Although it is a memoir of the famous British author's life up to about age thirty, the bulk of the book concentrates on his World War I experience. In graphic detail he describes life in the trenches, with its water, mud, rats, cold, and putrifying bodies, among other things. He also recounts the often meaningless attacks or "shows" that resulted in equally meaningless deaths. He was wounded at least twice and ...more

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Jul 07, 2011

1.1 rated it

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The first autobiography I've read in a long time. It was well written, over-the-top informative, in that now extinguished 'old toff' style. It was pretty damn interesting. Apparently there is a dim line of poetic benediction from Samuel Johnson to Robert Graves. Graves had a pretty interesting life, but I don't envy him for much of it – something which automatically qualifies this book as something that should be read.

On the subject of 'war poets' there is not so much. Graves was mo...more

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Feb 22, 2011

Sibyl rated it

This is an extraordinary book. It's as fresh to read as broadsheet journalism. Robert Graves is confiding, honest, provocative - not at all like a stiff upper-lipped English gentleman, (Perhaps this is because he was part-Irish, part German?)
Most of my knowledge of the First World War comes from reading the poetry of Wilfred Owen, a couple of biographies of Owen, and Pat Barker's 'Regeneration' trilogy. Graves's account of life in the trenches adds greatly to that picture. I was able to...more

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Aug 16, 2011

Melissa rated it

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Shelves: death, england, history-in-literature, world-war-one, post-traumatic-stress-disorder

I am fascinated by World War I, and Goodbye to All That is considered THE autobiography for that war. Robert Graves is a fascinating character, and his breezy style belies the trauma he experiences in the trenches.

There are many details that are delivered completely deadpan which left me with my jaw hanging. It's brutal. And I found it incredibly informative for our current times.

Here is a man who was on the front from the very beginning of the war, and when given the c...more

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Aug 15, 2011

Katherine Blankenship rated it

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One of my favorite passages, I love the way Graves describes these events.
"The colonel in one battalion I served with got rid of four new Anglican chaplains in four months; finally he applied for a Roman Catholic, alleging a change of faith in men under his command. For the Roman Catholic chaplains were not only permitted to visit posts of danger, but definitely enjoined to be wherever fighting was, so that they could give extreme unction to the dying. And we had never heard of one wh...more

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Jan 26, 2009

Zachary rated it

Shelves: history

Graves' farcical near-fantasy account of his life on the front in The Great War is all the better for the fact that he seems to have invented a great deal of it. All the characters and personages in this book, except maybe Thomas Hardy or Graves' wife, are knaves and fools of classical proportions and calculated to make the horror of the first war seem more like a blackly comic adventure--a peculiarly British attitude. One anecdote he didn't invent: his being declared dead after the Battle of So...more

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Apr 12, 2009

Doug Hart rated it

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Shelves: stunners, memoir

Other reviews have said it better (see Rachel Jacksons somewhere below), so I'll just say this book is the bombdiggity and shouldn't go unread by any lover of great writing.

If you do take the tour, however, the scholarly consensus seems to be be hop a ride in the original rowdy 1929 version (republished by Bergham Books with annotations in 1995)as opposed to the kinder, gentler, more adult 1957 version. Never much one for convention, Graves still apparently did himself a disservice ...more

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Mar 02, 2009

Eleanore rated it

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In Roman times “salve et vale” often served as a formal gesture of farewell. Commonly translated as “hail and farewell,” this phrase now expands upon the traditional sense of formal appreciation and summation in the face of separation to include a whole category of activities and events intertwined in the functional demands of modern business and society. In Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves sets out to make his own farewell to Britain, to the culture it embodied in the era before the First Wo...moreIn Roman times “salve et vale” often served as a formal gesture of farewell. Commonly translated as “hail and farewell,” this phrase now expands upon the traditional sense of formal appreciation and summation in the face of separation to include a whole category of activities and events intertwined in the functional demands of modern business and society. In Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves sets out to make his own farewell to Britain, to the culture it embodied in the era before the First World War, and even to the events and traumas of the Great War itself.

The dispassionate voice, full of unexpected wit and detail, sets out as an ironic interpreter of the craft and purpose of autobiography. However, Robert Graves shifts quickly into a subtler mode of both appreciation and critique of the England that raised him and that so enthusiastically entangled itself in World War One. The simplicity of Graves’s prose and the careful selection of factual detail underscore and reinforce the essential horror of trench warfare in a way that a more romantic style could not. As Graves notes of a fellow soldier and poet, “Siegfried had not yet been in the trenches… he would soon change his style.”

Graves’s style, far more familiar today through the pale imitations of modern journalism than in its original era, reflects the experience of his generation in its tone. His work embodies the very destruction Elie Wiesel later argued war wreaks upon poetry. Such a conclusion, however, does a disservice to poetry as Graves also demonstrates, capturing in his prose the small observations and details (no less life-affirming for being unglamorous) that give people the strength to endure incredible hardships. In the end, Graves’s actual farewell comes almost as an afterthought, explicitly identified in his final sentence. And so the book, in as much as it consciously associates itself with the formal tradition “hail and farewell,” also presents a subtle and perhaps unconscious critique of the concept.

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Aug 20, 2009

Charles Clark rated it

I think I felt the need for this book while reading Fussell (The Great War and Modern Memory
by Paul Fussell) a couple years ago. Graves writes of his early years, family history, and mostly of his wartime experience in a delightful and pleasurable manner, despite the often gruesome subject matter. He led an impressively eventful early life with a large number of prominent friends and acquaintances, but it is his style of telling the story that makes it a great read. His descriptions of tre...more

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Jul 10, 2011

Ed rated it

If Graves is read at all these days, this is probably by which most of hes readers know him, although "I, Claudius" and "The Greek Myths" are still around (at least on my shelves) and "The White Goddess" even makes the odd appearance. But this is as good a way as any to encounter Graves and his views of the English class system before, during and after World War I. Very interesting to compare it with "A Sort of Life", Graham Greene's memoir/biography at ab...more

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May 27, 2011

Oldesq rated it

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Shelves: 2011

Robert Graves poet and writer of the novel I, Claudius penned this memoir of his life as a soldier in WWI. A socially inept teenager at the time of his enlistment, Graves is as confounded by events on his side of the trenches as he is of the other. The story has a certain brisk breezy quality that may well be due to his writing it during an eleven week period so that he could pay the grocer bill. But Graves really captures the thoughts of those men whose brains were pounded by shelling into a...more

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Mar 29, 2009

Alex Merritt rated it

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This book is the autobiography of Robert Graves from birth to his leaving England after the Great War. The book is long, and it is easy to lose oneself in his descriptive prose; however, among all the lyric (if that's an appropriate adjective to describe a war) prose are hidden short, declarative sentences that are pure poetry. Graves's training in classical literature is obvious. It is considered a classic study of the Great War. It is both a condemnation of the war itself and the society and i...more

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Oct 13, 2011

Roger rated it

A very interesting autobiography of an English Poet in WWI. The first several chapters that covered his time at school before the war came off a bit weird, but as soon as the war starts everything makes a lot more sense. I was sort of stunned by the name dropping at first. It's easy to forget that if you attend Oxford, you meet a lot of famous people. The post war stuff is funny, especially his ill fated sojourn in Egypt. Certainly a book I would recommend.

Also, I hadn't realized that...more

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About Robert Graves

Robert Ranke Graves, born in Wimbledon, received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G. H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Pl...moreRobert Ranke Graves, born in Wimbledon, received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G. H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart failure.(less)

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“Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welsh, a new officer joined the company... When he turned in that night, he heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand.” — 1 person liked it

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