Erich Maria Remarque

All Quiet on the Western Front is one of those books that often appears on high school syllabi -- and I can see why: it's brutal without being savage; it's accessible without being indifferent. 

I'd not read Remarque's work all those years ago. But I have now, and I'm grateful for the experience. For me, the most striking aspect of All Quiet is its universality: Remarque's characters are German, but their condition, their suffering is human. The anguish which results from reading All Quiet is not limited by nationality or creed; it is an anguish which transcends political allegiance. 

There are scenes in All Quiet which are awful, tormenting: death and destruction cannot be avoided. When Remarque's characters face this destruction -- when they attempt to make meaning of it -- they fail: there is simply no place to begin their judgment. "Our knowledge of life is limited to death," writes Remarque. And really, what could be worse? 

All Quiet is not a perfect book, but it is a vital one: as an introduction to the trenches, it elicits horror; as a presentation of the humanity lost in those trenches, it evokes a sense of agony and regret. Remarque's characters do not -- they simply cannot -- understand the war, and that shows: the chapters where they postulate on its meaning become twisted and confused attempts at rationality. This confusion was inevitable: for the violence and panic which it confronted was unyielding. 

"What can possibly become of us?" asks Remarque.