In that case, I'll buy it.
Posted on 05/24/2005 2:27:36 PM PDT by wagglebee
The celebrated author of "Forrest Gump” is not happy with the New York Times recent review of his latest book – and is taking on the old Gray Lady.
Author Winston Groom tells NewsMax that the Times is trashing his latest book, "1942: The Year That Tried Men’s Souls” because it’s simply too pro-American.
Groom’s 1942 chronicles America’s courageous comeback from the military and psychological devastation that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Groom wrote the book in light of the Sept. 11 attacks – offering Americans today the perspective of a time after we had been struck at Pearl Harbor – and bounced back.
But in the upcoming May 29 issue of the New York Times Book Review, already made available to the publishing industry, critic Patricia Cohen actually derides the book for its parallels to the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks.
She accuses Groom, a noted military historian, of conducting "a portable pep rally designed to fire up the home team for the next epic showdown. The ‘Great Democracy’ versus the evil Axis – or more recently, the axis of evil.”
According to Cohen, Groom’s book states that the Japanese sought to control most of the world and to "squeeze America to death, while the colonial records of the Allies who already control it are glossed over.”
The Times’ reviewer apparently sees no moral difference between Britain’s colonial control of places like India, and the fascist powers' rape of China, North Africa and East Europe.
The Times review also neglects to point out that at the time, the Germans and their allies controlled almost all of Europe and North Africa, and the Japanese most of the Pacific.
Cohen also contends that readers will "have to make their way through some truly terrible writing.”
And after citing an anecdote in the book in which an American officer on Corregidor says he hoped his troops could rest and receive medical attention after surrendering – called by Groom "perhaps the grossest example of false hopes in the history of the world” – Cohen snipes: "Well, maybe. Unless you were hoping for a sophisticated account of the war in the Pacific.”
But Groom isn’t sitting still for the Times’ hatchet job.
He feels the review is a typical Times attack on anyone who stands up for America, including a much-praised historian who happens to believe his country was in the right in World War II.
"I began writing this book right after the September 11th terrorist attack,” said Groom.
"Being just as frustrated and mad as everyone else, I thought it would be interesting and instructive to do something to buck up Americans to what we are capable of.
"Though the first half of 1942 began in a cataract of disaster, by the end of it we were victorious everywhere and the Axis never gained another foot of ground, although it took another three years to run them to ground.
"I made one remark about what America can do when it gets mad in the introduction to the book, and all the rest of the 460 pages are a straightforward history of the year 1942 and the war.
"I have been accused of a lot of things,” the bestselling author continued, "but as far as I know I have never been accused of ‘bad writing’ – let alone ‘terrible writing.’”
In fact, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has praised the book for its "dramatic writing” and "in-depth analysis,” and Publishers Weekly says it "provides fresh renderings of the familiar Battle of Midway and Guadalcanal incidents.”
Groom added: "Obviously the lady did not read the book carefully, since she neglects to mention that the book does not cover only the Pacific Theater – there is also the Battle of the Atlantic, the North Africa landings, a survey the Russian campaign and the American Home Front.
"I guess Ms. Cohen is just too ‘sophisticated,’ as she implies of herself, to see that."
I understand that the Robert Zemeckis film of 'Forrest Gump' considerably softened up the book.
You've got to see this to believe it!
I've never read the book, truthfully I never saw what all the hype about the movie was for.
In that case, I'll buy it.
Praise from the Atlanta Urinal & Constipation -- shocked.
Patricia Cohen's qualifications in this area are exactly what?
Did any of you see today's review of the book "1776" in USA Today? I'm not good at finding the article to post but the reviewer, Bob MMinzesheimer, strongly infers that anyone reading the book will draw a parallel - that today's American soldiers are the imperial Hessians and Redcoats, and the Iraqi terrorists are the patriots. Frightening.
Sounds like a great endorsement to me!!!
It merely seemed to be a touchstone for nostalgia for the sixties marketed at aging boomers.
I also detested the strained facade of reaching for "evenness" as far as their take on Viet Nam went.
Still, as a piece of anthropological evidence it had its merits. But as a film, I quite agree.
What do you mean, the book was harder, as in more conservative? (please clarify, I'm "iggnerant")
PATRICIA C. COHEN
HISTORY OF AMERICAN WOMEN, SOCIAL HISTORY
Ph.D. Berkeley
Prof. U.C. Santa Barbara
Another feminist historian. Not qualified to review real history.
"1942: The Year That Tried Men’s Souls” because it’s simply too pro-American."
My folks were both alive and kicking during WWII, and had a mouthful to say about it. Being too pro-American wasn't anywhere in the ball park.
There was the victory garden and the endless canning.
There were the coupons, and the shoes that went bad on my mother as she walked home from the store right after buying them. She didn't go back to that store for 25 years.
There were the buddies lost at Pearl and in Europe. My dad was lucky.
WWII, hard on the Depression, shaped people and carved them down to the bone. No one, absolutely no one, has any call to say that these people living then were not completely aware that they could lose their lives, and, their country.
We still could. Too bad the NYT doesn't know this.
There was more, too, but I don't want to go into it.
And even after that, during the Oscars that year, the Hollyweird crowd went to the microphone (I am not making this up) and shouted:
"Forrest Gump is NOT, NOT, NOT a Conservative movie!!"
Face it Hollywood, the movie ridiculed the drug culture, the Black Panthers, 1960's Marxists, the anti-war movement, and the hedonistic lifestyle of the 1970's.
The MS media have chosen to openly ally themselves with Islamic terrorists, Communist tyrants, homosexual deviants, activist judges, atheists, revisionist 'historians', and any other thing that tends to hate truth and goodness. I'd love to have a crystal ball so I could look into the future to see what's going to be done about these scumbags.
the WSJ had a good review of it. David Cullough is a talented historian.
Athough I was pretty young when I read it, and it has been some time since I read it all I remember is that some events were changed. Forrest running the country is not in the book, instead he becomes a chess champion and goes into space.
Who shouted that? Or are you being figurative?
plus it had all those special effects--bringing people back from the dead, like JFK...
Please don't throw athiests into that bunch. I wager there are quite a few right here that are good Conservatives.
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