A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front. Or, if you wanted to avoid the obvious, how about the excellent Testament of Youth and horrifying Johnny Got His Gun.
Re: One of Ours not being Cather’s best: It reflects an advantage and disadvantage of the Pulitzer goal. You get a sampling of a bunch of great writers but maybe not necessarily their best work. One my early reads was Faulkner’s A Fable (Pulitzer 1955), which interestingly enough, also has WWI as its setting. Needless to say, it was a slog for me. But I’m glad I read it and it made me appreciate more The Collected Stories I read a few years later.
Yes that's a great point! With Faulkner, and a few others, you get the sense that they were almost lifetime achievement awards versus a singular award for that title. That said, it's also hard for us to know in the modern era what resonated with Americans at varying points in our history. It's all really interesting to think about!
In addition to "The Guns of August", she also won a Pulitzer for "Stillwell and the American Experience in China." Both of which I have on my shelf.
Yes I'm definitely looking forward to reading that one!
A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front. Or, if you wanted to avoid the obvious, how about the excellent Testament of Youth and horrifying Johnny Got His Gun.
Those first two you mentioned are certainly classics for a reason. Haven't heard of the others! I'll add to my list.
Agree about One of Ours being good but not Cather's best. And Tuchman is one of the great writers of history.
Re: One of Ours not being Cather’s best: It reflects an advantage and disadvantage of the Pulitzer goal. You get a sampling of a bunch of great writers but maybe not necessarily their best work. One my early reads was Faulkner’s A Fable (Pulitzer 1955), which interestingly enough, also has WWI as its setting. Needless to say, it was a slog for me. But I’m glad I read it and it made me appreciate more The Collected Stories I read a few years later.
Yes that's a great point! With Faulkner, and a few others, you get the sense that they were almost lifetime achievement awards versus a singular award for that title. That said, it's also hard for us to know in the modern era what resonated with Americans at varying points in our history. It's all really interesting to think about!
Clarification on my earlier statement - I haven't seen this disadvantage applying to the non-fiction winners.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn is an excellent WW1 novel. It is much newer than books mentioned.