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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on January 06, 2024, 03:31:20 PM »‘1940’, by Laurence Thompson [with a ‘P’], published 1966 ...
Chapter 1, ‘Gate of the Year’
P9, ‘1940 began quietly’ [partly because of ‘noise restrictions’ regulations], so there were ‘muted’ celebrations [including a brief ‘knees up, mother brown. - ‘that half-tamed relic of the Bacchanal’]
TheDark. The UnderGround.
P10, distrust of ‘authority’. celebration of ‘bloody-mindedness’
[in part, because of non-occurrences of ‘massacre from the air’ (apocalyptic images that haunted pre-worldwar2 sub-consciousness(es) ... eg, Baldwin: ‘bomber will always get through’... eg, bombing scenes in films such as Things to Come ... eg, Picasso’s Guernica ... etc ...
Consider also ‘Bomber’ Harris’s monomaniacal belief in ‘war-winning’ massacres from the air ... even when reality showed many survived even massive bombing raids ... & tended to ‘bolster’ rather than reduce ‘anti-them’ moral(e) ..,
{Of course ... dreaded possibilities seemed to become realities in ‘last scenes’ of ww2 ... ‘mere oblivion’... ‘sans everything’ ... Hiroshima ... Nagasaki ... etc ...}]
Chapter 1, ‘Gate of the Year’
P9, ‘1940 began quietly’ [partly because of ‘noise restrictions’ regulations], so there were ‘muted’ celebrations [including a brief ‘knees up, mother brown. - ‘that half-tamed relic of the Bacchanal’]
TheDark. The UnderGround.
P10, distrust of ‘authority’. celebration of ‘bloody-mindedness’
[in part, because of non-occurrences of ‘massacre from the air’ (apocalyptic images that haunted pre-worldwar2 sub-consciousness(es) ... eg, Baldwin: ‘bomber will always get through’... eg, bombing scenes in films such as Things to Come ... eg, Picasso’s Guernica ... etc ...
Consider also ‘Bomber’ Harris’s monomaniacal belief in ‘war-winning’ massacres from the air ... even when reality showed many survived even massive bombing raids ... & tended to ‘bolster’ rather than reduce ‘anti-them’ moral(e) ..,
{Of course ... dreaded possibilities seemed to become realities in ‘last scenes’ of ww2 ... ‘mere oblivion’... ‘sans everything’ ... Hiroshima ... Nagasaki ... etc ...}]