Irwin Shaw (1913–1984)

“THE TOWN SHONE IN the snowy twilight like a Christmas window, with the electric railway’s lights tiny and festive at the foot of the white slope, among the muffled winter hills of the Tyrol. People smiled at each other broadly, skiers and natives alike, in their brilliant clothes, as they passed each other on the snow-draped streets, and there were wreaths on the windows and doors of the white and brown houses because this was the eve of the new and hopeful year of 1938.”

As the novel show more opens Christian Diestl, an Austrian ski instructor, speaks with a young American woman and warns her that war is coming. The storyline follows him as he fights in France, Northern Africa, Italy, and Germany. Noah Ackerman, a young Jewish American, is living in California. He is feeling lonely and disconnected when he meets and falls in love with Hope Plowman. He enters the Army and faces anti-Semitism in his own ranks. He is deployed to England before being sent into battle. Michael Whiteacre is a writer and film producer living the “good life” in New York. He is determined to enter the Army as a private but is soon disillusioned, so he pulls strings to get assigned to non-combat duty.

Published in 1948, this book is historical fiction at its finest. It is written in realistic fashion. Shaw was a writer before joining the US Army during World War II, and the story is based on his first-hand experiences. It is a beautifully crafted novel. It is told in chronological order alternating among the three protagonists. The characters are deeply defined, and the reader senses that their stories will eventually converge.

The narrative focuses on the personal lives and military experiences of the soldiers. It does not attempt to address the military strategies or leadership decisions. It is a sweeping epic of a literary work that examines the moral quandaries presented by war. I found it easy to get immersed in the characters’ lives. At 700 pages of dense writing, it requires a significant time commitment, but I found it well worth the effort. show less

Shaw knows how to write a good story. He keeps you reading until the last page. His plot is complex and interesting (albeit a tad trashy and potboilerish at times), but he really invests you in these characters and their trials and tribulations and makes you root for them to win in the end. Unfortunately, his representation of women is extremely dated and off-putting. They're sexually objectified, and only important in their relation to the men characters, who are Shaw's central focus.

The show more one exception is Gretchen, who finds several creative sparks that surprise and motivate her to pursue a handful of different careers. Out of all the women within the novel's pages, she comes the closest to being an independent character in her own right. But Shaw muddles this up too, by making the main thrust of her arc revolve completely around her failed romantic relationships and not her career.

Even the disappointing ending hinges on the "salacious" behavior of an important woman character. And, yes, it's primarily to provide a moment of pathos for one of the male characters at the novel's conclusion.

I realize sexism was normalized and accepted in the time period of the story, as well as the one in which it was written, but it doesn't make it any easier to read. And it's all the more surprising that the story ends in 1969, at the dawn of the women's liberation movement. This could've been a great opportunity for Shaw to address the events his women characters have gone through and reflect on how things are possibly beginning to change. But nope, the most he does is have his characters offhandedly criticize "those damn pot-smoking hippies" and that's as far as he delves into progressive social movements. What a waste. show less

This was Shaw’s last finished book and gets bagged a lot by critics who regret how different he is here from his early work. I want to be more generous than that. It’s intensely personal, derived from the author’s life. That’s how it feels and, subsequently reading a little about the end of his life, that’s how it was. Not being a fan of sitting through blow-by-blows of other people’s dreams, it was pleasing that the parts of the book where he is drifting in and out of life – show more an operation was botched and bitterly retold – are real. It reminded me of my father’s emergence with some brain damage from a coma. He talked of the most surreal things as if they could be touched. There was no difference in his brain between them and those around him. Shaw does a good job of conveying that close to death dream state.

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2019/03/31/acceptable-losses-by-irwi... show less

Overall rating will wait until I finish this volume - maybe in 20 or 30 years :-). (Actually, it didn't take me long to get through the short stories volume. These stories are highly readable and make you want to keep going. They struck a chord with me for sure.)

Short Stories, Five Decades **** stars
Shaw is a wonderful short story writer, and none of these many stories is unenjoyable. The early stories, taking place during the hard times before World War II, and the stories that take place show more during and immediately after the war, are more gritty, but the whole series of stories, which seems to be in chronological order, tells a pretty good history of the middle part of the American 20th Century. Only after reading deep into the collection did I begin to have a few niggling doubts. Shaw's male characters ring quite true, and it is easy to identify with their ideals and their quirks, even when Shaw is trying to make a point using some odd behavior, such as the voyeurism in the last story. But his female characters seem well out of date. Perhaps they are a good representation of how women felt about themselves then and the stereotypes they subscribed to, but perhaps not. In the end, this doesn't take away from the immense enjoyment of such a well-crafted collection of stories, but it does leave them more as consistently entertaining, usually informative historical artifacts than as masterpieces of the genre. show less