#TheGeneral-CSForesterNovel | Reviews of The General (C. S. Forester novel) in English Books| Hashreview

#TheGeneral-CSForesterNovel

The General is a 1936 novel by C. S. Forester, who is also known for his Horatio Hornblower novels and 1935's The African Queen.The General follows the career of Herbert Curzon from his experiences as a junior officer in the Second Boer War to the Read More..

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Hash title	The General (C. S. Forester novel)
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Description	The General is a 1936 novel by C. S. Forester, who is also known for his Horatio Hornblower novels and 1935's The African Queen.The General follows the career of Herbert Curzon from his experiences as a junior officer in the Second Boer War to the day when he is given command of his lancer regiment on the outbreak of the Great War. While personally courageous and dedicated, Curzon is otherwise unexceptional: an officer like many others, and it is the very ordinariness of Forester's character that serves to give the novel power. As the Great War begins, Curzon takes his part as a major of an unfashionable cavalry regiment. He is given a temporary promotion to regimental command and then quickly a brigade command. At the First Battle of Ypres he manages to keep his head about him and, upon the death of his brigadier, becomes a general. Curzon returns to England while his regiment remains in Belgium. He makes an advantageous marriage to the daughter of a Duke which gives him political connections to the opposition "Bude House" set. He is promoted again and again, eventually being placed in command of a hundred thousand men and orders attacks that condemn many of them to mutilation and death amongst the shells and the gas and the machine guns. At the end the Ninety-first Division, which he has brought to a high degree of efficiency, is forced to retreat in the March 1918 German offensive. But he decides to "go up the line" on his horse with a sword rather than face defeat and professional failure. The novel implies that he seeks death in battle; he says "We can still go down fighting". He is injured by a shell fragment, endures months of drugged agony and loses a leg. His war is over. Yet Curzon—General Sir Herbert Curzon by this time—is not a brutal man or an uncaring one: simply a brave and honest but stubborn and unimaginative leader. For Forester, the tale of Herbert Curzon's almost inevitable rise to high command, the senseless slaughters he directs and his eventual retirement to the life of an aged cripple in a wheelchair, is not about Curzon—it is about the attitudes and mores of the British Army and of British ruling society more generally: the limited and inflexible mindsets that (in Forester's view) led to the appalling casualties and the horrors of the First World War.For Forester, to understand Herbert Curzon's simple determination to do his duty is to understand how men like Curzon, who were not by nature evil, were led to order the cream of their country's manhood to sacrifice themselves in the pointless bloody slaughter of the Somme or Verdun or Gallipoli. Curzon is promoted to command, initially because by “adventitious circumstance” when he is in the right place, not because of any intrigue. At the beginning of the war he is a Major in a cavalry regiment, the Twenty-second Lancers. He replaces his elderly Colonel, who is shunted off to a training position. Later he replaces Coppinger-Brown of the Ninety-First Division who is "on the verge of senile decay" and "no more fit to be trusted with a division than to darn the Alhambra chorus’s tights." Curzon is sent to stiffen-up the Ninety-First, which has two brigadiers, Watson and Webb. Coppinger-Brown and Watson both go, and because he is junior to Webb as brigadier Curzon is promoted to Major-General. He accepts transfer to infantry command in Kitchener’s new army. Knowing little of the infantry he first inspects the cooking-facilities of his new division, which are the same as in the cavalry. He is appalled by their filth and squalor, and he puts new heart into the dispirited men. As the novel says several times, he was eventually to command "four divisions .... something like a hundred thousand men in battle – as many men (or more men) than Wellington or Marlborough ever commanded in the field" He proves to be "one of the best generals of the new armies" He distrusts theorists, and is not part of the "blood-brotherhood of Camberley" (the staff college) Like his seniors he believes in "Attrition" and the "Big Push" with brute force; more men, more guns. Forester compares them to a group of savages who try and extract a screw from a piece of wood by applying more "main force" rather than by rotating it which would require far less effort. Hence he is startled by the tank victory at Cambrai.
Description	The General is a 1936 novel by C. S. Forester, who is also known for his Horatio Hornblower novels and 1935's The African Queen.The General follows the career of Herbert Curzon from his experiences as a junior officer in the Second Boer War to the day when he is given command of his lancer regiment on the outbreak of the Great War. While personally courageous and dedicated, Curzon is otherwise unexceptional: an officer like many others, and it is the very ordinariness of Forester's character that serves to give the novel power. As the Great War begins, Curzon takes his part as a major of an unfashionable cavalry regiment. He is given a temporary promotion to regimental command and then quickly a brigade command. At the First Battle of Ypres he manages to keep his head about him and, upon the death of his brigadier, becomes a general. Curzon returns to England while his regiment remains in Belgium. He makes an advantageous marriage to the daughter of a Duke which gives him political connections to the opposition "Bude House" set. He is promoted again and again, eventually being placed in command of a hundred thousand men and orders attacks that condemn many of them to mutilation and death amongst the shells and the gas and the machine guns. At the end the Ninety-first Division, which he has brought to a high degree of efficiency, is forced to retreat in the March 1918 German offensive. But he decides to "go up the line" on his horse with a sword rather than face defeat and professional failure. The novel implies that he seeks death in battle; he says "We can still go down fighting". He is injured by a shell fragment, endures months of drugged agony and loses a leg. His war is over. Yet Curzon—General Sir Herbert Curzon by this time—is not a brutal man or an uncaring one: simply a brave and honest but stubborn and unimaginative leader. For Forester, the tale of Herbert Curzon's almost inevitable rise to high command, the senseless slaughters he directs and his eventual retirement to the life of an aged cripple in a wheelchair, is not about Curzon—it is about the attitudes and mores of the British Army and of British ruling society more generally: the limited and inflexible mindsets that (in Forester's view) led to the appalling casualties and the horrors of the First World War.For Forester, to understand Herbert Curzon's simple determination to do his duty is to understand how men like Curzon, who were not by nature evil, were led to order the cream of their country's manhood to sacrifice themselves in the pointless bloody slaughter of the Somme or Verdun or Gallipoli. Curzon is promoted to command, initially because by “adventitious circumstance” when he is in the right place, not because of any intrigue. At the beginning of the war he is a Major in a cavalry regiment, the Twenty-second Lancers. He replaces his elderly Colonel, who is shunted off to a training position. Later he replaces Coppinger-Brown of the Ninety-First Division who is "on the verge of senile decay" and "no more fit to be trusted with a division than to darn the Alhambra chorus’s tights." Curzon is sent to stiffen-up the Ninety-First, which has two brigadiers, Watson and Webb. Coppinger-Brown and Watson both go, and because he is junior to Webb as brigadier Curzon is promoted to Major-General. He accepts transfer to infantry command in Kitchener’s new army. Knowing little of the infantry he first inspects the cooking-facilities of his new division, which are the same as in the cavalry. He is appalled by their filth and squalor, and he puts new heart into the dispirited men. As the novel says several times, he was eventually to command "four divisions .... something like a hundred thousand men in battle – as many men (or more men) than Wellington or Marlborough ever commanded in the field" He proves to be "one of the best generals of the new armies" He distrusts theorists, and is not part of the "blood-brotherhood of Camberley" (the staff college) Like his seniors he believes in "Attrition" and the "Big Push" with brute force; more men, more guns. Forester compares them to a group of savages who try and extract a screw from a piece of wood by applying more "main force" rather than by rotating it which would require far less effort. Hence he is startled by the tank victory at Cambrai.

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Name	The General
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Authors	C.S. Forester
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Language	English
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Publisher	Michael Joseph (UK)Little, Brown, and Company (US)
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