Points Summer Book Club

Fussell's sarcasm is like that in another great war memoir or reminiscence, Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That. I'm thankful, though, for Remarque's dramatic irony in this novel. Look at the end of ch. 2: Kemmerich is dead, already hauled up unceremoniously in a waterproof sheet. Paul takes Muller the fine boots, and in return Paul gets a piece of sausage (I think) and hot tea with rum. Not only that, but Kemmerich's boots fit Muller well. What a break; what a gift from from a friend and comrade. What an incredible episode in the movement of the novel.

The worst cliche would be "life goes on." But obviously it does go on, with all the gestures and reciprocities that one finds in genteel social situations. That's on the literal level; beyond that are the ironies. Nothing can ever be unironic again. War ironizes everything.

I don't know of a genuine work of art that valorizes war, not even Homer's Iliad, which is as gruesome as it gets. Am I missing something?