John Hersey--A Bell For Adano (1944)

I finished this a couple of weeks ago and then went on vacation before I could get to the article, so the book is not as perfectly fresh in my mind as I might like it to be. That is unfortunate in that this is exactly the sort of book that I took up this particular list for a few years back to be able to read occasionally, and it did not disappoint. The Pulitzer Prize novel of 1945, it is a small, but poignant story about a fishing village in Sicily under the occupation of the American army that was written and published in real time within a few months of the U.S. invasion of the country. While it is true that it depicts the American war effort as the public of the time liked to think of it, a rough-edged but on the whole benevolent force for good, it is not as if there was no truth in that image. It is a luxury that we have now that (most) people did not have at the time to analyze the myriad shortcomings of World War II-era American behaviors. In my admittedly limited experience of Europeans, I found that the age cohorts that had overall the most positive views of Americans were overwhelmingly those that were children and adolescents during the last years of the Second World War and the decade or so following it. One man I knew in the Czech Republic who claimed to have been in Plzen when the U.S. Army entered that city, at which time he would have been around eight years old, said that the Americans were the first happy people he had ever seen. My personal sense is that the writers of that generation tended to give pretty honest accounts of how they perceived the wartime experience to be, and anyone who has read these books knows that they are not as a rule particularly rosy, or gushingly deferential to the military and its leadership, even those (such as this one) which were published while the war was still in progress. And let us not imagine that in our contemporary writings we are not presenting a picture of ourselves and our cleverness and skepticism and fierceness that is any less wishful in its thinking or will be less ridiculous to future generations than the failings, such as they are (though I am obviously partial to the genre), of the literature of World War II.


John Hersey was the son of Protestant missionaries and spent the first ten years of his life in China, though I am guessing his family were well off and of good lineage, since he attended Hotchkiss, Yale, and Cambridge in the teeth of the Depression. He was still publishing articles in the New Yorker when I was in high school in the 80s (he lived until 1993), part of that WASPy segment of cultured society whose presence has declined noticeably even since my early life. He was never, I think, and certainly by the time I was around, considered one of the major authors of his generation, but A Bell For Adano is a worthy book, and a good representative of the brisk, cautiously optimistic style that is one of the appeals of the writing of this period. The IWE introduction is, given the inclusion of the book on the list, one of its more inscrutable ones. "A sentimentalist with a hardboiled style," it begins, "John Hersey wrote a real tearjerker in A Bell for Adano...The hero is an overidealized second-generation American; the villain...is based on the swashbuckling George Patton, who alternated between public disfavor (as when he slapped a soldier from Brooklyn) and favor...At the time Hersey wrote Adano Patton was in disfavor and Hersey may have overpainted him just a bit. Hersey's later novel The Wall"--which did not make the IWE list however--"must be ranked ahead of this one." For all this they do like it, I am quite sure.
Now for my extraneous notes...

On page 57 there is a reference to the Fascist song Giovinezza. Not to give anyone the idea that I was a weirdo as a kid or anything, but in my youth my family had an LP record of the American Heritage history of World War II (we had one for World War I also) which featured snippets of speeches, battle sounds, popular songs of the period, and so forth. I listened to these records quite a lot. In the "build-up to World War II" section of that record we were taken briefly to Mussolini's Italy where "Young Fascists...whipping up the crowds into a frenzy..." and then it began:


p. 77 The Americans' economic policy upon letting the local fisherman go out in their boats once the war situation has settled somewhat:


"It is true that your profit will be limited to fifteen per cent of what you take in. The rest you must spend in wages to your fishermen and upkeep on your boats."


Still, aren't there many businesses, albeit much higher volume ones, that operate at much lower margins than 15%.


Much of the charm of the book consists, 75 years later, in the knowledge that many of the old ways and life of the village depicted in it that have endured for centuries are within a few years about to change dramatically or go away forever. Despite the charges that are sometimes made against Hersey for being patronizing towards the Italians, the characterization of the villagers is not terribly different from what the neo-realistic Italian directors and even Fellini himself would do a few years later. The villagers were very poor people, barely literate, some of them extremely simple-minded. One guy has to brush goat droppings off his bed before he goes to sleep every night. Meanwhile Hersey was a Yale and Cambridge educated New Yorker writer. I won't claim that he did a perfect job of capturing the complexity of the Italians as individuals but the life of the village as a whole I thought was one of the stronger parts of the book.


p.90 "...this kind of situation was meat for Sergeant Borth, who thought the whole war was a joke."


You get these kinds of people when you have a conscript army, even in World War II. I haven't read about anybody who thought the Iraq/Afghanistan war was a joke, or would have been allowed to.


p. 105 Corporal Schultz was not a gold mine of conversation, and pretty soon the two fell silent."


This is unfortunately is how most desirable people would be able to describe me. I wonder if Hersey was a good talker? I can't find any interviews with him on YouTube or elsewhere.


p.115 "The two men now had, besides their mere community of tongue, another thing to draw them together: they both knew the same girls. In a foreign land, that is enough to make Damon and Pythias out of two sworn enemies."


p.147 The deposed Fascist mayor, trying to stir up dissent, for which he would however be arrested.


"The Americans may be friendly, but they are not good fighters...He says that the Americans are timid in battle. he says that our own troops could even beat the Americans...He says that at the place called El Guettar the Americans did not press their attack, he says that they behaved like frightened men and were defeated. The British can fight, perhaps, but not the Americans."


We can't have that kind of talk going on. And I like that "perhaps" with regard to the fighting ability of the British.


p. 172 Typical American serviceman's opinion of the town:


"Boring? Say, if they ever give this old world an enema, this is where they'll put the tube in."


p. 174 "The Colonel named Ham, who was expert at saying Yes to his superiors and No to his inferiors..."

I'll emphasize again that the portrait of this society in snippets and in miniature is nice for what it is.


There was an incident near the end that is revealing of a significant change in public attitude, at least, in our time from this one, and which was rather jarring. Every afternoon in Adano trucks and other American military vehicles would drive through the center of town throwing candies to the children. This inevitably drew a crowd, which eventually prompted a gang of older boys to organize in order to procure more of the candies. This caused a mild panic among the other children, which resulted in one boy getting pushed in front of an oncoming truck and being killed. The American commanding officer, while portrayed as responding humanely to the event by wartime standards, did not hesitate to chastise a group of the children by explaining that the boy had been killed because he was selfish. This struck me even as surprisingly harsh and I suspect most contemporary people of my general socio-economic milieu would find it horrifying. Men especially were not so squeamish about making judgments on children and telling them where they had failed in direct terms even in what we would consider sensitive circumstances, I guess.


I am a little sorry to be leaving this book behind. It belongs to one of the literary and social eras that I particularly like.


The Challenge


This Challenge initially was turning up a bunch of junk but in the end it actually produced a few attractive competitors. Unfortunately only 15 of the entries managed to scrounge up at least one review on Amazon, so the many pretenders coming in with "0" finished in a big tie for 16th place and necessitated the expansion of the tournament.




1. Kurt Vonnegut--Cat's Cradle...……………………………………………...1,192
2. John Hersey--Hiroshima...…………………………………………………….507
3. Peter Zeihan--The Accidental Superpower  …………………………………..451
4. Catherine Gray--The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober...………………………..48
5. Fred David--Strategic Management...………………………………………….45
6. Islamic Art & Architecture 650-1250 (Yale)…………………………………….7
7. A Bell For Adano (1945 Movie)…………………………………………………7
8. H. G Wells--The New Machiavelli...…………………………………………….6
9. Rabbi Marvin S. Antelman--To Eliminate the Opiate, Vol. 1...…………………5
10. Uwe Johnson--Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl….3
11. Arnal/Stryker--Bordered Lives: Transgender Portraits From Mexico...………2
12. Horatio Alger, Jr.--Mark Manning's Mission...………………………………...2
13. Carolyn J. Sharp--Irony & Meaning in the Hebrew Bible...…………………....1
14. Horatio Alger, Jr.--Tom Thatcher's Fortune...………………………………….1
15. Elizabeth Robins Pennell--Our House & London Out of Our Windows...……..1
16. Richard Dehan--That Which Hath Wings...……………………………………..0
17. Jacques Roujan--Battles & Bivouacs: A French Soldier's Notebook...…………0
18. Gosling/Villiers--Fictional Leaders...…………………………………………..0
19. A Point of Pride: The University of Portland Story...…………………………..0
20. Lynda Adamson--Thematic Guide to the American Novel...…………………...0
21. John Rentoul--Questions to Which the Answer is "No!"...……………………...0
22. A Bell For Adano (1967 TV Movie)…………………………………………….0
23. "Send in the Crane" (Cheers TV Show, Season 7, Episode 9)…………………..0


1st Round


#10 Johnson over #23 "Send in the Crane"
#11 Arnal/Stryker over #22 A Bell for Adano '67


This 1967 TV version doesn't seem to be available anywhere.

#12 Alger over #21 Rentoul


A seeding victory. Credit for the title on the Rentoul though.


#20 Adamson over #13 Sharp


In a clash of academic books, Adamson wins because her book can be found at the New Hampshire Technical Institute and the Pinkerton Academy, while no one in the state found Sharp's book worth acquiring.


#14 Alger over #19 Portland University
#15 Pennell over #18 Gosling/Villiers


Pennell once wrote an introduction to Washington Irving's The Alhambra, a book I have praised on this site.


#16 Dehan over #17 Roujan


These are both ancient books that have been out of print for close to 100 years. I am guessing Dehan is the more readable story.


Sweet 16


#1 Vonnegut over #20 Adamson
#2 Hersey over #16 Dehan
#3 Zeihan over #15 Pennell
#4 Gray over #14 Alger
#12 Alger over #5 David


I don't want to read a textbook on strategic management even if it has a 45-2 edge in reviews.


#6 Islamic Art over #11 Bordered Lives


Surprisingly, no one has moved to acquire the Bordered Lives book for their collection yet.


#10 Johnson over #7 A Bell For Adano '45


I would like to see this movie, which is from my favorite Hollywood year, is generally considered to be pretty good, was directed by Henry King, who had a distinguished career (the silent Stella Dallas, The Gunfighter, Margie, Carousel) and stars Gene Tierney, which indicates that the wartime romance angle is emphasized more in the film than it was in the book. However it appears to be largely unavailable. The only DVD copies I can find for sale are from Australia, cost $27, and are incompatible with US machines, and it doesn't seem to be streaming on any service that I have. In my late 30s and early 40s when I went through a phase where I was more passionate about tracking down classic films I would resort to buying old VHS tapes, and I still have a VCR that works, though I haven't done this for a few years now. But there don't seem to be any VHS tapes of this movie available either, if that is even still a thing you can do anymore.


This is about all of the 1945 movie I can find anywhere. It was shown on TCM in August 2014, but there do not appear to be any plans to rescreen it at present.


#8 Wells over #9 Antelman


Wells exercises his privilege as an IWE author.


Elite 8


#1 Vonnegut over #12 Alger


Neither of these Alger books was available in any of my qualifying libraries, though numerous of them carried a copy of Ragged Dick, which must be considered Alger's masterpiece.


#2 Hersey over #10 Johnson


Hersey also has IWE author privilege, which I have designated as carrying through to the Final Four except in the event of an upset. This Anniversaries book was published in a multi-volume box set as part of the New York Review of Books series and looks very serious. Hiroshima was famously originally published as an entire issue of the New Yorker in 1945, and while I've never read it, I used to have the paperback copy of it going way back to my teenage years, and perhaps I still do.


#3 Zeihan over #8 Wells


And here we are. Zeihan does have an upset, and therefore is able to knock Wells out of the tournament before he gets to the Final Four.


#6 Islamic Art over #4 Gray


The library community evidently has no interest in the joys of being sober. None of them have bothered to get the book. All of which sets up a pretty good Final Four.


The Final Four


#1 Vonnegut over #6 Islamic Art


The Vonnegut is the sort of short, breezy but still intelligent book that the Challenge was created for, to enable me to keep up somewhat with more modern literature without having to sacrifice too much time from the classics.


#2 Hersey over #3 Zeihan


Honestly, so is the Hersey. The two were on a collision course for the final and here they are.


Championship


#1 Vonnegut over #2 Hersey


I have devised a lot of formulas and possibilities for luck to decide these tournaments, so that I don't have to break down every matchup. However these books were practically identical as far as status, length, age of the authors, nationality. Also I had not read either of them previously. In the end I gave Vonnegut a victory in double overtime because I have just read Hersey and I haven't read anything by Vonnegut since I was in my 20s and who knows, given my systems, when the opportunity would arise again. And he was also the #1 seed.

A Bell for Adano is a missive from a black and white world, but we need some color on this post.