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A review by dotorsojak
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
4.0
4 stars firm
Not having seen the film for more than 2 decades, on a whim, because I love war fiction and because I want to read more books written and published during the decade of my birth, I bought and sat down to read this famous novel.
It did not disappoint, though it frequently irritated me.
As everyone knows, there are two main characters, Milton Warden (from Connecticut) and Robert E. Lee Pruit (from Harlan, Kentucky). These men are complex and their inner lives are treated seriously even as we get the impression that JJ (Jones the author) is also judging them and sometimes judging them harshly.
As I read I did not remember the movie well at all. I knew that Sgt Warden must be the character played by Burt Lancaster and that Prew must be Montgomery Clift. Of course who doesn’t remember the movie still of Lancaster kissing Deborah Kerr? So Kerr must be Karen Holmes. Otherwise I remembered nothing of the plot of the movie. Oh, yes, wasn’t there a knife fight? Between whom? Over what? I didn’t know.
The book is a hyper masculine—yet quite critical—look at the US Army right before the US’s entry into the Second World War. It is set in Hawaii, in fact at Schofield barracks, where Toni’s father was himself stationed a couple of decades later.
Not having seen the film for more than 2 decades, on a whim, because I love war fiction and because I want to read more books written and published during the decade of my birth, I bought and sat down to read this famous novel.
It did not disappoint, though it frequently irritated me.
As everyone knows, there are two main characters, Milton Warden (from Connecticut) and Robert E. Lee Pruit (from Harlan, Kentucky). These men are complex and their inner lives are treated seriously even as we get the impression that JJ (Jones the author) is also judging them and sometimes judging them harshly.
As I read I did not remember the movie well at all. I knew that Sgt Warden must be the character played by Burt Lancaster and that Prew must be Montgomery Clift. Of course who doesn’t remember the movie still of Lancaster kissing Deborah Kerr? So Kerr must be Karen Holmes. Otherwise I remembered nothing of the plot of the movie. Oh, yes, wasn’t there a knife fight? Between whom? Over what? I didn’t know.
The book is a hyper masculine—yet quite critical—look at the US Army right before the US’s entry into the Second World War. It is set in Hawaii, in fact at Schofield barracks, where Toni’s father was himself stationed a couple of decades later.