John Bowers (1)

Breezy writing is all well and good, but not when the breeze turns into a hurricane.

This book is a very good read, but it achieves that by making everything far too simple. Yes, Braxton Bragg was quarrelsome in the extreme, and most of his officers disliked him -- but can he really be reduced to a case of a man with extreme saddle sores (which Bowers calls by a rather earthier name)? Was William S. Rosecrans really the sort of moral coward we see here? I doubt it.

And there are other problems -- officers given the wrong ranks, for instance. And there is one big, big discrepancy. Other source I've read say that, on the second day of the Battle of Chickamauga, Rosecrans tried to address a defect in his lines by ordering a certain division to improve its positioning -- and a staff officer misunderstood the order, and told the division commander to make a move that opened a big hole in the line, and into that hole James Longstreet poured almost half the Confederate army. But the whole botched order is downplayed in this account. If it happened, it needs to be described; if it didn't happen, the discrepancy needs to be explained, and it just doesn't happen.

The result almost seems like fiction. It really is a good read. But I'm left searching for another account of Chickamauga; I just don't know what to trust here.… (mere)

Reading this book made it pretty clear that John Bowers is older than I guessed. I looked it up; he’s eighty-six.

The reason I looked is that he makes references to people and things I don’t know about – often, using them like adjectives in the story he’s telling:

…like Maggie of Jiggs and Maggie…

Uniforms went away or had a Ruptured Duck on them…

Their models were June Allyson and Deanna Durbin…

…latest episodes of Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy…

…always a handsome, taller figure resembling Tab Hunter.

I was now Trevor Howard in the Outcasts of the Islands.

…and despite myself, I thought of Greta Garbo in Camille

I’ve seen Garbo (but not in Camille), Many others, of course, I got; being only one and a half generations removed. This use of specific references grounds the text in culture, and given how many I understood, might even be good: but I wonder how much I missed – there were many more references than I’ve shown here which I just had to gloss over.

The book is in three parts; the first part contains tall tales – mostly pleasant enough but a bit more sexualized than my own experience growing up: perhaps I’m repressing something. Part two has more tall tales (all of which are pretty entertaining, yet fairly disconnected – I had no trouble putting the book down and picking up up later while I was reading these sections.) Part two also has about five pages of what seems to be a much less embellished history of the narrator’s parents and grandparents. This stuck out, as if it were too serious to be joking about. Part three, however, was enthralling. I had to stop reading in the middle and as soon as I could, I picked it up again. Part three tells the story of the narrator’s first real love. It’s got lots of humor, but a sad ending. Afterwards I poured myself a drink and sat for a minute. That’s just the way it hit me.

I liked the book. I might say it was uneven, trying to be both large and truthful, and a little over-sexed, but I really liked it. Judging from this book, Bowers is the sort of guy I want to hang out with – he’s got a lot to say. I’ll read more of his work, no question.… (mere)

A charming, simply-written, coming-of-age story set in Tennessee. Bower’s youthful narrator recalls the trials and tribulations from his life in regards to his search for love. The book really captures the essence of pre-teen and teenage emotions toward love and sex (two connected, yet, at times, wholly separate things.) The prose reflects the simplicity of youth that is complicated by deeper ideas of love. It was a great novel to study concerning the growth of a young male’s understanding of both his place in the world and his hopes for finding (and bedding) his one true love.… (mere)