Delayed Dispatch from the Front
In And No Birds Sang Mowat tries to do what in the midst of war he knew he could not: make those far removed from battle understand what it was like. Even after almost 40 years, the material is too powerful to accommodate itself to a personal memoir….
Through anecdote and story, the book does entertain.
But surely this is not what Mowat intends, for as he makes the war interesting its tedium remains hidden. Mowat is at pains not to glamorize his subject, yet there remains something glamorous about his tales of crashing shells, impossible treks and scaling cliffs. For war memoirs to succeed, they must subvert the romanticism which naturally accrues to the record of war without becoming as hard to get through as the war years themselves. The personal memoir may be the worst format for accomplishing this, for the author tells of his own growth (as if war were therapeutic), tells of the experiences burned deepest into him (as if war comprises only dramatic events). And because the narrator survives, it is harder for him to overcome the civilian's belief that death is something that happens only to others.
Everybody knows that war is hell; it is the author's task to transform that knowledge into understanding. At times Mowat succeeds, at times the writing bogs down in adjectives and ellipsis. We do learn about Farley Mowat: the book makes plausible the unlikely combination of pacific naturalist and guntoting foot soldier, although since he is unsure that he ever killed anyone a certain expected dimension of moral reflection is absent…. The power of war is apparent in its refusal to be expressed in Mowat's book. It takes a writer of stature—both as an author and as a moral, sensitive person—to make the attempt as valiantly as Mowat has.
David Weinberger, "Delayed Dispatch from the Front," in Maclean's Magazine (© 1979 by Maclean's Magazine; reprinted by permission), Vol. 93, No. 41, October 8, 1979, p. 58.
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