Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography

An outstanding recollection of life during the Great War. It is so helpful for those who wish to attempt to think constructively about 'the war to end all wars', to read about how those involved at the time felt and thought. We have heard so much from those who would characterize all involved as deluded. It is good to be reminded of the real challenges the army faced and the camerarderie felt towards those they served with. A first class read.

I should have read this classic at school but left it much later to read. Young Graves seems really unlikeable and I wanted to give up reading the section about his childhood. I persevered and his description of life and death in the trenches was worth it. I quite forgave him for being such a shallow youngster and ended up admiring him for his conduct during WW1. Shame that the final section of the book confirmed my original view of him. For a real insight into the horrors of war this takes some beating.

There's certainly no shortage of Iraq/Afghanistan-related war memoirs, and many of them are quite good - but Robert Graves ghastly and bitter retelling of his time in the trenches of WWI is worth reading simply to put more recent in stories in more appropriate context. In the trenches, during irrational attacks, units would lose thousands of men in one fell swoop - compared to recent Iraq battles where 10 soldiers were considered "heavy casualties." We in 2013 simply can't relate to what these soldiers of 1914-16 went through. Graves is as bitter as can be, and his disgust and anger powers the memoir, but it's in the cold British style that gives the best punch. Instead of emotional ranting (that is common in more modern memoirs) he plays it pretty straight. Despite that, it is a dated style, which takes some getting used to. Of course, it's dated because he's not writing down to his audience - but expects them to follow along. Some of his asides do contain references that are no longer that relevant. For a student of war-related literature, this is still a must-read. It speaks very effectively to the experience of a young soldier in wartime, and many of the same emotions he endured are just the same today, both during and post-war. While I've found many other books ultimately more compelling, this is a harbinger for much war-related literature that we read today.

There's not a lot I can add to what other reviewers have already said about Graves's memoir, so I'll dispense with a summary and say briefly what I liked and did not like about it. Take it or leave it. First of all, Graves knows how to write--this memoir is just as entertaining and fun to read as any of his novels. His literacy and narrative ability immediately set him apart from many of the other World War I memoirists--whose books are often clunky and poorly written--as do his wit and his eye for the significant detail. The book is very funny in many places and deeply moving in others. His descriptions of trench life are suitably depressing, as are his tales of the randomness of World War I violence and even the suicidal tendencies of some of the soldiers. The only things I disliked about Good-bye to All That were Graves's obvious bitterness and the lackluster final third. Graves, of course, is entitled to be bitter about the war--it was a terrible experience for thousands of people--but his view of the war as expressed here is imbalanced. His narrative is significantly skewed and rather self-pitying in places. Also, the strength of his narrative peters out near the end, when he spends some time teaching in Cairo. The last few chapters read more like notable miscellany than a coherent memoir. Those two misgivings aside, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Not only was it a good memoir, it was a remarkably good source (I read this for a graduate seminar in World War I) for the attitudes and ideals of the "sensitive artistic types" following World War I. If you're interested in comparing this memoir with a vastly different perspective, I recommend reading it along with Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel. Recommended.