Second half of the book.
Incredible, I went through the whole book in expectation of some sort of outrage from part of Graves in regards to the title. He just resolved not to return to England without much ado. What a jester.
It seems that this man’s greatest adventures were mere happenstances of his day. A man whose destiny was shaped by forces outside his power and his only response was to act nearly sangfroid and superstitiously to his surroundings.
His memory prowess baffles the mind. He has great memory for detail and because of that it tends to work up ones jealousy.
Describing life in war trenches, Graves makes it sound like a Sunday walk through the Parks of Hell.
Like I said before, this guy writes with a bellicose passivity that yanks grins out your mouth when you least expect it.
Its just one of those books that teaches to take life as it comes, grudge all you want, this is it. And make the best of it.
What struck me as amazing was the same parallels I drew from the voices of dissent coming out of Graves autobiography with the voices of dissent we here in the eve of the Irak-USA war.
I guess what I call homosexual writing is really nothing more than what the British call sensibility. He cares. There is a level of manly emotion that I never seen expressed, nearly feminine, to it. These days there is a look that is much praised amongst those in artistic circles, and which is an outward androgyny. I believe that Graves managed quite well to paint an inward androgyny that exist/ed/s within his writing.