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On War and Writing
“In our imaginations, war is the name we give to the extremes of violence in our lives, the dark dividing opposite of the connecting myth, which we call love. War enacts the great antagonisms of history, the agonies of nations; but it also offers metaphors for those other antagonisms, the private battles of our private lives, our conflicts with one another and with the world, and with ourselves.”
Samuel Hynes knows war personally: he served as a Marine Corps pilot in the Pacific Theater during World War II, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. He has spent his life balancing two careers: pilot and professor of literature. Hynes has written a number of major works of literary criticism, as well as a war-memoir, Flights of Passage, and several books about the World Wars. His writing is sharp, lucid, and has provided some of the most expert, detailed, and empathetic accounts of a disappearing generation of fighters and writers.
On War and Writing offers for the first time a selection of Hynes’s essays and introductions that explore the traditions of war writing from the twentieth century to the present. Hynes takes as a given that war itself—the battlefield uproar of actual combat—is unimaginable for those who weren’t there, yet we have never been able to turn away from it. We want to know what war is really like: for a soldier on the Somme; a submariner in the Pacific; a bomber pilot over Germany; a tank commander in the Libyan desert. To learn, we turn again and again to the memories of those who were there, and to the imaginations of those who weren’t, but are poets, or filmmakers, or painters, who give us a sense of these experiences that we can’t possibly know.
The essays in this book range from the personal (Hynes’s experience working with documentary master Ken Burns, his recollections of his own days as a combat pilot) to the critical (explorations of the works of writers and artists such as Thomas Hardy, E. E. Cummings, and Cecil Day-Lewis). What we ultimately see in On War and Writing is not military history, not the plans of generals, but the feelings of war, as young men expressed them in journals and poems, and old men remembered them in later years—men like Samuel Hynes.
Samuel Hynes knows war personally: he served as a Marine Corps pilot in the Pacific Theater during World War II, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. He has spent his life balancing two careers: pilot and professor of literature. Hynes has written a number of major works of literary criticism, as well as a war-memoir, Flights of Passage, and several books about the World Wars. His writing is sharp, lucid, and has provided some of the most expert, detailed, and empathetic accounts of a disappearing generation of fighters and writers.
On War and Writing offers for the first time a selection of Hynes’s essays and introductions that explore the traditions of war writing from the twentieth century to the present. Hynes takes as a given that war itself—the battlefield uproar of actual combat—is unimaginable for those who weren’t there, yet we have never been able to turn away from it. We want to know what war is really like: for a soldier on the Somme; a submariner in the Pacific; a bomber pilot over Germany; a tank commander in the Libyan desert. To learn, we turn again and again to the memories of those who were there, and to the imaginations of those who weren’t, but are poets, or filmmakers, or painters, who give us a sense of these experiences that we can’t possibly know.
The essays in this book range from the personal (Hynes’s experience working with documentary master Ken Burns, his recollections of his own days as a combat pilot) to the critical (explorations of the works of writers and artists such as Thomas Hardy, E. E. Cummings, and Cecil Day-Lewis). What we ultimately see in On War and Writing is not military history, not the plans of generals, but the feelings of war, as young men expressed them in journals and poems, and old men remembered them in later years—men like Samuel Hynes.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published February 27, 2018
About the author
Samuel Hynes
56 books12 followersA scholar and literary critic, Samuel Lynn Hynes Jr. attended the University of Minnesota before serving in the United States Marines as a torpedo bomber pilot during the Second World War. After completing his degree at the University of Minnesota, he earned his masters and doctorate degrees from Columbia University. Hynes taught at Swarthmore College from 1949 until 1968, Northwestern University from 1968 until 1976, and Princeton University from 1976 until his retirement as Woodrow Wilson professor of literature emeritus in 1990.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 24, 2021
in the ontology of war remembered, there are no abstractions.
December 26, 2024
Reached the halfway point -- my mark for whether or not I can really put thoughts on it or not -- and gave up. It's an absolute dreck at times, with a major lack of political analysis. Instead, it just makes vast generalizations that are pretty far from the truth.
I really, really love his criticism of war writing. I think we should center the memoirs and personal accounts more than anything else. It's just that... man, what he follows with is so inconceived that I felt skeezy reading it.
For instance, he goes on about how the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were bad. But then goes on about how war is a legitimate response to events. Even with the caveat that civilians will always have the highest death toll.
The entire time, I was reminded of my favorite writer, Howard Zinn. He's like Hynes in that he was also a bombardier in WWII and then became an academic. They both had to reckon with the ideas of what they were a part of as soldiers, as well as the broader culpability for us as Americans. What is and has been done in "our name"?
Zinn took the way it should be taken -- go against the bourgeoisie, not the fellow proletariat. Never again means now. That is our duty to one another.
Hynes took it as -- I feel bad about it, but hey, war's war. You can't beat them; join them!
I really, really love his criticism of war writing. I think we should center the memoirs and personal accounts more than anything else. It's just that... man, what he follows with is so inconceived that I felt skeezy reading it.
For instance, he goes on about how the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were bad. But then goes on about how war is a legitimate response to events. Even with the caveat that civilians will always have the highest death toll.
The entire time, I was reminded of my favorite writer, Howard Zinn. He's like Hynes in that he was also a bombardier in WWII and then became an academic. They both had to reckon with the ideas of what they were a part of as soldiers, as well as the broader culpability for us as Americans. What is and has been done in "our name"?
Zinn took the way it should be taken -- go against the bourgeoisie, not the fellow proletariat. Never again means now. That is our duty to one another.
Hynes took it as -- I feel bad about it, but hey, war's war. You can't beat them; join them!
May 5, 2018
Samual Hynes collection of essays entitled "On War and Writing" is part memoir, part literary criticism, and part history lesson through the lens of a World War II veteran and college professor. Some of the essays were a bit dense and challenged me a bit as they discussed some Great War authors and poets I was unfamiliar with, but overall I enjoyed the collection.
May 17, 2022
This dude writes with such alarming poignancy, and now I have a bunch more books to read.
May 6, 2023
2.5 This was okay, a collection of essays, some more interesting than others.
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May 28, 2025Very fine collection of reflections on the subject of war and its remembrance. I am using for an adult education class.
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May 30, 2018Repetitive. And I do not view it as one of his better efforts.
Jim
Wilmette
Jim
Wilmette
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March 25, 2019Samuel Hynes, Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature emeritus at Princeton and a decorated Marine pilot who flew in both World War II and Korea, is author of numerous books, articles, essays, and reviews, all written in easy, natural, and elegant prose. Among his well-received books are The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World and Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator.
In On War and Writing, a collection of pieces written over the years, the common subjectis war—specifically the two world wars fought in the 20th century, as experienced by “young men who fought and civilians who only imagined,” and the men and women who wrote about them. “Those great wars changed the world, and the lives of the men who fought in them, and of those who lived in the aftermath. We in the twenty-first century live differently, and think differently, because those wars were fought.”
Read the rest: https://www.theamericanconservative.c...
In On War and Writing, a collection of pieces written over the years, the common subjectis war—specifically the two world wars fought in the 20th century, as experienced by “young men who fought and civilians who only imagined,” and the men and women who wrote about them. “Those great wars changed the world, and the lives of the men who fought in them, and of those who lived in the aftermath. We in the twenty-first century live differently, and think differently, because those wars were fought.”
Read the rest: https://www.theamericanconservative.c...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews