{"id":3553,"date":"2010-10-03T22:13:16","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T22:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3553"},"modified":"2010-10-04T00:39:25","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T00:39:25","slug":"summer-series-2010-killing-rommel-by-steven-pressfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3553","title":{"rendered":"Summer Series 2010: Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summer Series 2010: Reviewing the Books!<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0continues……<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Killing Rommel: A Novel<\/strong><\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by Steven Pressfield<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a rule, because of my academic \u00a0background and predisposition toward policy analysis,\u00a0\u00a0I have a difficult time picking up a novel. Not because I dislike novels, but because with so many histories and “serious” policy books in my antilibrary<\/a> demanding to be read,\u00a0I feel guilty indulging myself in reading fiction.\u00a0\u00a0Realizing that is mildly insane, I decided to shoot for a better balance in my reading this year between fiction and non-fiction and must report….that I have failed miserably. I’ve only read five novels so far\u00a0in 10 months but one of the five that I read was Killing Rommel<\/strong> and I’m glad that I did!<\/p>\n

I “met” the novelist\u00a0Steven Pressfield<\/strong> online through the first iteration of his website, then\u00a0a focus on the tribal aspects of the war in\u00a0Afghanistan. We had some intriguing exchanges and I picked up his The War of Art<\/a><\/strong>, one of Steve’s few non-fiction works about becoming a professional writer ( or any creative professional) and defeating the internal psychological\u00a0resistance that thwarts success and acheivement. I loved that book and read it straight through in one sitting, and later interviewed him about it<\/a>. Knowing my interest in history and military affairs, Steve sent me a copy of his Killing Rommel<\/strong> and it sat in my antilibrary until this summer, where I read it during long stretches at poolside.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0found Killing Rommel<\/strong> to be a page turner.<\/p>\n

Via a literary device, Killing Rommel<\/strong> is the story of\u00a0 “Chap” – Major Richard Lawrence Chapman, DSO, MC. – and his mission as a member of “The Desert Rats”, The Long Range Desert Group of the British Army to find and kill the legendary\u00a0commander of Afrika Korps<\/strong>, Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, <\/strong>“The Desert Fox”. In pursuit of his mission, “Chap” encounters an array of reverses, hazards and adventures in a manner of an ordinary, thoroughly decent,\u00a0man rising above himself\u00a0to master\u00a0circumstances both physically\u00a0heroic and morally agonizing, leaving the field with honor and humanity intact but free neither of doubt nor memory.<\/p>\n

What makes “Chap” remarkable and identifiable as a character\u00a0in his British ordinariness of an officer doing his duty to\u00a0King and country, is the uncanny and unerring way Pressfield has reconstructed a British\u00a0outlook specific to Chap’s time and class – that of the “respectable” upper middle class or younger sons of younger sons of gentry, for whom education and life was bounded by the traditions of the public school and military regiments to which family history was attached. It is a quality of “placedness” and sense of self that most Americans (other than scions of Andover and similar prep schools) cannot easily relate. Where you went was part of who you were and your whole outlook on life. Once established, Chap’s history consistently\u00a0informs his actions and reactions as the plot progresses; Chap, in other words, “lived” an authentic life in Killing Rommel<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A second feature of Killing Rommel<\/strong> is Pressfield’s fidelity to historical realism. This is expressed both in his attention to details of military history and geographic\u00a0setting and his willingness to grip war – even an unimpeachably “good” war as WWII – in all it’s moral ambiguity and unmediated violence\u00a0on the human scale. It is disturbing to the reader\u00a0that Rommel, the great enemy and objective of the mission, is an admirable\u00a0man fighting\u00a0for an evil cause; it is disturbing that dying Germans are not unrepentant Nazi beasts but are\u00a0found to be men with families and lives, conscripts and volunteers,\u00a0not unlike Chap and his comrades, who must persevere and fight for their lives but acknowledge these shades of gray.<\/p>\n

Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer Series 2010: Reviewing the Books!\u00a0continues…… Killing Rommel: A Novel\u00a0by Steven Pressfield As a rule, because of my academic \u00a0background and predisposition toward policy analysis,\u00a0\u00a0I have a difficult time picking up a novel. Not because I dislike novels, but because with so many histories and “serious” policy books in my antilibrary demanding to be read,\u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[420,133,444,39,367,436,445,594,607,18,217,557,153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-book","category-fiction","category-military","category-military-history","category-psychology","category-reading","category-steven-pressfield","category-summer-series","category-war","category-warriors","category-writing","category-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}