The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
Published in 1948.
Another of the late 1940s wave of WWII books by first time novelists, and this is a big one. It’s often paired with Norman Mailer’s slightly shorter debut The Naked & the Dead, but it lacks the sensationalism or made-up curse words, though not the ambition.
The novel begins before the war and follows the stories of three characters with no seeming connections– Michael is a Broadway director, Noah a young Jewish man making his way in New York City, and Christian a casual Nazi ski instructor. Of course, when war breaks out these characters are propelled toward an inevitable encounter, but there is a lot of book before that happens.
The novel’s most riveting scenes are set in the Southern boot camp in which Noah is shunned and bated by demented rednecks for his ethnicity and the German hospital where Christian watches over a faceless lieutenant who outlines his plans on how to save the Germans from their victory.
The story perhaps did not require 700 pages in which to be told–though we can be thankful that Shaw scrapped his idea to follow a fourth character–a bullet shot by one character at another–from when it was mined from the earth to its maufacture to its shipment to the frontlines. Still, the book is not a platform for writerly showing off, and it retains a great deal of narrative power, even when memories of the Good War have faded and entered the realm of Ken Burns.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:07 am
Just ordered some WWII novels and two of them you have suggested. The Gallery and the above mentioned.
I like the bullet story idea.
Thanks.