World War II–probably no war in history conjures up such familiar images for us. We know just how the soldiers looked, the weapons–and of course the great historical figures: demonic Hitler, swaggering Mussolini, portly bulldog Churchill, stone-faced Stalin, Roosevelt with cigarette holder, and the anonymous, caricatured “treacherous Jap.” The combat movies of the time have spawned an endless series of successors, while military historians and buffs have analyzed and depicted the war’s every aspect, until each campaign’s become a well-rehearsed platitude and bloody gore’s reduced to banality.
Yet Washington could not control the worldwide ferment the war unleashed. In the vast reaches of Asia and Africa, hitherto subjugated peoples began to demand self-determination. The Soviet Union, emerging from the war as a world power, quickly provided a counterweight to U.S. aspirations. Even the bomb, symbol of American predominance, touched off in the victorious heartland a deep sense of foreboding and vulnerability. Already in 1945, for example, just a few months after the war’s end, Life was picturing a “36-hour war,” with nuclear missiles from an unnamed enemy devastating 13 major U.S. cities.
Her recent writings have been more broadly popular. The 1982 Braided Lives, a story of mothers and daughters, was something of a bestseller, and Gone to Soldiers is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. But Piercy has not deserted political concerns and social purposes, and the present book is certainly her most ambitious attempt to encompass the movement of history. She has worked longer on this novel than on any of her others (it was conceived ten years ago), not only in writing but in researching the war era. (She accumulated a data base, she says, some eight times longer than the 700-page novel itself.) The time and work in themselves show the importance Piercy sees in the World War II period.
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In my book, though, these are more or less forgivable flaws. At least Piercy feels the need to make a point. She may thereby open herself up to accusations of obviousness or awkwardness or “shrillness”–a term seemingly reserved exclusively for politically committed writers–but that’s far better than being reconciled to the status quo, a much more common condition among writers in the 80s. The world of fiction is after all a big one, with room for all kinds of styles and subjects.
Take, for example, the most prominent popular myth of the war: that it was democracy’s great crusade against fascism. Yet even before the fighting had stopped, the army intelligence apparatus had introduced a category of security risks whom they called “premature antifascists”–those who had opposed fascism in the 30s. Preeminent antifascists were in process of being purged from responsible posts, as in the 1944 substitution of Harry Truman for Henry Wallace as Roosevelt’s vice-presidential running mate. And postwar Europe quickly saw “ex-” fascists and former Nazis restored to positions of power (the now-famous case of Kurt Waldheim was by no means unique) as the great crusade against communism took shape.
Piercy’s vision of the war years is just too cozy and comfortable. The primary reason is the book’s rehearsal of old myths, but there are others. Piercy has a predilection for happy endings for her sympathetic characters–almost all of whom are appropriately paired off by the last page–and she frequently concentrates on domestic details.
