Good-Bye to All That : An Autobiography (Anchor Books)
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The quintessential memoir of the generation of Englishmen who suffered in World War I 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, and the civilians who mindlessly cheered the carnage from the safety of home. His portrait of the stupidity and petty cruelties endemic in England's elite schools is almost as scathing as his depiction of trench warfare. Nothing could equal Graves's bone-chilling litany of meaningless death, horrific encounters with gruesomely decaying corpses, and even more appalling confrontations with the callousness and arrogance of the military command. Yet this scarifying book is consistently enthralling. Graves is a superb storyteller, and there's clearly something liberating about burning all your bridges at 34 (his age when Good-Bye to All That was first published in 1929). He conveys that feeling of exhilaration to his readers in a pell-mell rush of words that remains supremely lucid. Better known as a poet, historical novelist, and critic, Graves in this one work seems more like an English Hemingway, paring his prose to the minimum and eschewing all editorializing because it would bring him down to the level of the phrase- and war-mongers he despises. --Wendy Smith
Midwest Book Review
Good-Bye to All That is Robert Graves' classic 1929 autobiography with its searing account of life in the trenches of the First World War. In 1957 a then middle-age Graves totally revised his text, robbing it of the painfully raw edge that had helped to make it an international bestseller. By 1957 major changes in his private life had taken place: Graves was no longer living with the American poet Laura Riding, under whose influence and in whose honor the original had been written. By cutting out all references to Riding, by deleting passages which revealed the mental strains under which he had labored, and by meticulously editing the entire text, Graves destroyed most of what had made it so powerful but also removed it from the only context in which it could be fully understood. Richard Perceval Graves in this Berghahn Books edition as re-published the original 1929 text on the occasion of Graves' 100th anniversary. Edited and annotated by Robert Graves' nephew and biographer, this restored edition with its lucid introduction greatly enhances its value and returns a great autobiographical work to its original state.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Good-Bye to All That : An Autobiography (Anchor Books)
Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (Anchor Books),Robert Graves,Paul Fussell,Anchor,0385093306,1895-,20th century,Authors, English,Biography,Biography & Autobiography,Biography / Autobiography,Biography/Autobiography,Graves, Robert,,Historical - British,Literary,Personal narratives, British,World War, 1914-1918,Biography & Autobiography / General,Graves, Robert,United Kingdom, Great Britain,Works by individual poets: from c 1900 -
Books Report:
Recommended Books