Parade’s End online resources (Updated)
Illustration by Stella Bowen
I will probably stay close to my usual pattern of posting during the read-along for Parade’s End. With “online resources,” I try to find sites or pages that are useful in understanding a work. If anyone would like to add a resource to these lists, feel free to email me or leave a comment.
Ford Madox Ford
The Ford Madox Ford Society page
The International Ford Madox Ford Studies series
Ford’s Training, an article by Sara Haslam at The Open University
Julian Barnes’ essay for The Guardian: The Saddest Story
Ford Madox Ford’s personal life was deeply complicated, made worse by his own indecision and economy with the truth. No wonder unreliability, shifting identities and the turmoils of love and sex are the hallmarks of his greatest novel. Julian Barnes admires The Good Soldier.
A review in The New York Times on a couple of books covering Ford and his work
Update: Autobiography, biography and Ford Madox Ford’s women by Ros Pesemen at the Women’s History Review looks at the appearance of Ford’s partners in his work. After the Affair explores the post-breakup works of Ford and Jean Rhys (Thanks to Mel U for the links)
Parade’s End
If your country’s copyright laws are similar to Australia’s, the first three books can be found at Project Gutenberg Australia
A summary of the series can be found at jrank.org
A review of No More Parades in the March 20, 1926 edition of The Literary Review. The article includes a picture of Ford, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound.
World War I literature
The Wisconsin Library Association website provides a select list of WWI Fiction and Memoirs (link no longer works)
In addition to the WLA list, here are a few additional books on World War I and the literature it generated:
George Walter, ed., The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
Trudi Tate, Modernism, History and the First World War
Bernard Bergonzi, Heroes’ Twilight: A Study of Literature of the Great War
John Brophy, The Long Trail: Soldiers’ Songs and Slang, 1914 – 1918
Dorothy Goldman, Jane Gledhill, and Judith Hattaway, Women Writers and the Great War
Guy Chapman, Vain Glory: a Miscellany of the Great War 1914-1938
Allyson Booth, Postcards from the Trenches: Negotiating the Space between Modernism and the First World War
Update: The WLA site mentions Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of War. In the past week, Stephen Pentz (at his blog First Known When Lost) has a couple of posts on Blunden’s memoir. The first post provides an overview of the book and his method as well as a couple of memories. The second post covers one of the sad, humorous features of the war (and the name of one of his poems)–“Trench Nomenclature”. Also check out Stephen’s comment with additional recommendations and information.
I have added some links to color photographs from World War I.
Mel u
great resources page-I just linked it on my tab about the read along-I also did a post on chapter one of Parade's End and have now added it to that-my edition of Penguin classics has an introduction my Max Saunders-Saunders has published (1996) a huge 2 volume biography of FMF-it is quite expensive to buy on amazon but it looks like it would be near definitive -I will probably do one more post on chapter one-but wont go beyond that until the read along begins-
Dwight
Thanks. I could not find much beyond superficial comments about the books. Glad to know we'll be changing that!
Stephen Pentz
Dwight: Thank you very much for linking to my blog. It is very kind of you.
As if there isn't already enough to read about The Great War, I recommend "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" by Siegfried Sassoon and "Good-bye to All That" by Robert Graves. Also, Faber has published "The War Poems" of Sassoon in a single volume.
It is my understanding that Ford, Sassoon, and Graves all served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. As you probably know, Sassoon and Graves knew each other quite well during the war. I don't know whether either, or both, of them encountered Ford during the war.
Dwight
My pleasure in providing the link, and thanks for the additional recommendations and info.
Mel u
I just read the Guardian and New York Times Articles on FMF-both are very good and helped me understand Parade's End literary methods a bit more-partially the work is about confusion, memory, the nature of knowledge, the construction of history-I also read the article on Trains which is interesting-
I do not have a clear idea of where I would put Parade's End in terms of literary greatness-if FMF were told it is not a book for everyone or the casual reader-he would say of course it is not-I am through books 1 and 2-I am so glad I am reading this book-
I no longer think it is an Encyclopedic Narrative as it scope is to narrow and its narrative mode is to oblique-and there is little stepping back in the work
FMF said you could not consider yourself and educated person until you had read Flaubert's A Sentimental Education 14 times (FMF was given to hyperbolic remarks as is Tietjens) -there are a lot of similarities between these two works-I would just say reading Parade's End just once is adding a good bit to my education-plus it really is a lot of fun