Friday, August 30, 2013

Cephalopod Coffeehouse Review: The Killer Angels

Welcome to August's Cephalopod Coffeehouse, a cozy gathering of book lovers who meet to discuss their thoughts on the best books they read the past month. My selection* for this month is The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. Published in 1974, it's considered the classic novel of the Civil War — look, it says so right on the cover!

Winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize
I picked this book up reluctantly, after having finished most of the rest of my self-assigned reading for 2013. I know next to nothing about the Civil War and haven't ever been terribly interested. But wow. What an incredible book. Shaara wisely focuses rather than trying to evoke the entire scope of that war: he narrows in on one battle (Gettysburg) and two primary characters, General James Longstreet on the Confederate side and Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the Union side. Other military leaders get to take the narrative helm from time to time, but these two men take center stage.

The melancholic Longstreet
Shaara's prose may be a little sentimental at times, but his characterization of those two officers is exceptional. Chamberlain in particular is so finely drawn that his character was revived from obscurity: virtually nobody had remembered his heroism at Little Round Top until this novel was published.

Robert E. Lee, however, does not come across well here. What image I had of him was of a tragic hero: wonderful leader, terrible cause. But by the time Gettysburg came around, Lee had been undone by success: he thought he couldn't lose, so he stopped strategizing. As my son said, while watching the Ken Burns documentary on the war, "Oh! I know what happened to him! Hubris." Lee's men loved him, but he was no tactician in Gettysburg and Pickett's charge led thousands to needless deaths. I mean, "needless" even in the context of war. In contrast, Longstreet seems both brilliant and practical, though he didn't inspire the same sort of love. I felt depressed after each Longstreet section, though — he was always hurtling into doom, and he knew it. He was gloomy anyway, due to the death of three of his children, and now he found himself on the wrong side of an unwinnable war. Life for Longstreet just sucks.

Bookish Chamberlain: before the war, he was a college professor
Chamberlain is really the hero of this book. I enjoyed all the time we spent in his head. He's human, he's frail, he's scared, he's almost unbelievably brave. It seems the way Shaara depicts the battle of Little Round Top is historically quite accurate, and so I have to accept it, even though Chamberlain is so amazing it seems like authorial overreach. On top of his superhuman calm and courage, he seems so ... sweet. His friendship with Kilraine and his protectiveness toward his brother are heartwarming — and heartrending. The scene with the escaped slave was more nuanced, but seemed refreshingly honest, even if it was (probably) invented wholesale. I loved the little bit of humanist philosophy Shaara inserts in the arguments between Kilraine and Chamberlain. They are opposites, but I believed them both.

Some readers come away feeling Shaara was pro-war, some that he was anti-war. But The Killer Angels isn't so neatly categorized. Shaara seems to feel the Civil War was a glorious folly: the bloody bits are there, but mostly the war is romanticized; at the same time, Shaara seems to think it was awful and pointless. I wonder about that juxtaposition. Maybe that's the way a lot of men feel about war? (Women seem less conflicted.)

New estimates put Civil War deaths at 750,000

My daughter will be studying the Civil War this year in AP US History, and I'm going to recommend she read this book before that unit. It may just be Gettysburg, but it's a good human-scale intro to the war, and it certainly piqued my interest in that time period: we are now working our way through the Ken Burns documentary, and I've added the new, acclaimed Civil-War-era history Ecstatic Nation to my to-read bookshelf. I would highly recommend this book, even to those bored by history. Especially to those bored by history.

Edition note: The audiobook narration by Stephen Hoye was excellent. He's a slow reader and he practically sings the more lyrical parts, but that seems appropriate. He helped me get into the story — not that I needed much prodding. It's a page turner.

* I write for this blog and also for my own, Words Incorporated. I reviewed separate books for each.

Check out the other Cephalopod Reviews here:

1.The Armchair Squid2.Scouring Monk
3.Trisha @ WORD STUFF4.Counterintuitivity
5.Denise Covey, L'Aussie Writer6.The Random Book Review
7.Sally's Scribbles8.sharonhamiltonauthor.com
9.StrangePegs -- The Wizard of Oz10.Lara Schiffbauer
11.M.J. Fifield12.Julie Flanders
13.Nicki Elson14.Bird's Nest
15.Spill Beans16.Yolanda Renee
17.My Creatively Random Life18.Words Incorporated
19.Divine Secrets of the Writing Sisterhood20.Hungry Enough To Eat Six
21.Ed & Reub22.StrangePegs -- "Memories"
23.V's Reads24.Maryann Miller's It's Not All Gravy
25.Feather's Passion

26 comments:

  1. Awesome. I recently studied this time period in depth, and all I have to say is: fascinating. History is so amazing.

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    1. Isn't it? I love starting with historical fiction: it's so much juicier than a dry history book. After I get the impressionistic picture, I can sit through a more factual retelling.

      Thanks for stopping by!

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  2. Now that I am older I can't read these kinds of books any more. The sorrow of all that death sometimes just can't be borne.

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    1. I hear you. After reading this one and then the nonfiction book "Sex & War" (which I review on my Words Inc. blog) I am DONE. I need something vigorously fluffy and cuddly to read next. Hope I'll find something on the blog hop!

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  3. There is a conflict embedded into the idea of war, isn't there? Dying for "what is right" will always have a romanticism about it. But dying all by itself is bloody awful. The last book I read that was a Civil War novel was very good: "March" by Geraldine Brooks. This one sounds good too.

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    1. "Dying for 'what is right' will always have a romanticism about it. But dying all by itself is bloody awful." That is mighty pithy, Kerry! Well stated.

      I had forgotten that "March" was set during the Civil War. Or maybe I never knew. I really like Brooks, and I haven't read that one. After I recover from August's war trauma (the book kind, anyway) I'll have to read that one.

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  4. I write about civil war in my novels, so this book would actually make a great resource for me. I'm going to check it out. :)

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    1. Definitely a great resource! You've probably already discovered this, but when I was researching surgical methods of the 19th century, I found records of battlefield surgery during the war. Grim and fascinating reading. There must be loads of other stuff too: newspapers, wedding announcements, letters, all scanned in and available to the public, for free.

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  5. I always love reading historical novels well written. This one sounds amazing. Great review. Thank you.

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    1. You're welcome! If you read it, stop by to let me know what you thought.

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  6. I love learning about history through novels.... generally speaking, learning is best when it doesn't feel like learning!

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    1. I agree! I wish schools would realize this and work historical fiction into their history classes.

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  7. Thanks for this review. I like the idea of a focused history that allows so much insight into the characters of the key men. I also like that the author reflects all the gray areas of war - it's rarely fully right or fully wrong.

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    1. Shaara had to do a lot of imaginative reconstruction of characters, but he really did his research.

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  8. I have a student - 5th grade - who's seriously into the Civil War. Too much for a kid, do you think?

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    1. Well, I listened to Slate magazine's "Audio Book Club" discussion of this book, and Emily Bazelon said her dad read it to her as a child, and was VERY excited to read it to his grandchildren when they were born. I think they were younger than 5th grade.

      I think it depends on the kid: the violence is less than in The Hunger Games (read by my son's entire 5th grade class, pretty much) but the time spent in the men's heads might not hold a kid's attention. Then again, if he/she is super into that war, and knows who these characters are ...

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    2. Here's a link to the Slate podcast: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_audio_book_club/2011/05/the_audio_book_club_on_the_killer_angels.html

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    3. My son is a "picky" fiction reader (he actually loves those dry history books :)) so I may give this one a try.

      I'm in awe, Sister Steph, at how much and widely you read!

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    4. Excellent. I'll pass the recommendation on. For all I know, he's already read it!

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  9. This book sounds really interesting. I know nothing about most of American history, so it might be a good book to add to my TBR. :)

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    1. It's a great introduction! Very gripping. Makes me want to reread Cold Mountain.

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  10. Love, love, love the Civil War and anything about it! I've not read The Killer Angels (and now I'm wondering why since it's The Classic Novel of the Civil War!), but you can bet I will be. It's funny that you bring up Ken Burns, because my post next week will be about documentaries and he's my absolute favorite! His Civil War documentary (which I watched back in high school) was one of the main things that made me fall in love with history and historical fiction. This was a great pick for this week!

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    1. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about the Ken Burns doc! We all really enjoyed it. My husband grew up right near Gettysburg and is still pretty obsessed with all things Civil War. Like you, he'd seen the Burns doc but never read the Killer Angels — maybe fiction seemed a little too "light" a treatment for a war, or something. But after I finished it, his interest was piqued, and he blasted through it last week. Loved it, too!

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  11. A fascinating and interesting lesson in history. Thanks so much.

    Nas

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  12. Okay, can I just say Boy knows how to shoot it straight? (I was trying to remember his nickname that is so far from his name you can't trace it back to use here and I forgot it. Boo.)

    Gotta love a kid who can throw around his literary devices with such panache.

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  13. I had never heard of this book, but I am now definitely going to read it. Thank you.

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