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One of my favorite authors, and I have read many things. Do you think you could do better in the midst of history?
by empiricus 3y ago
One of my favorite authors, and I have read many things.
Do you think you could do better in the midst of history?
- mbustamanter 3y agoHe was born in the German Empire, fought in both world wars, lived through Weimar, rise of the Soviet Union, rise of the Third Reich, saw his country split in two, saw the Berlin wall fall and the collapse of the USSR. That's a very high bar for me to reach, and I don't know what the modern equivalent would be.
- bloak 3y agoI've not yet read anything by Ernst Jünger. Which would you recommend?
- Amezarak 3y agoThe Storm of Steel is his most popular book and his WWI memoir, but I think his best fiction work is The Marble Cliffs. It’s one of the few books I immediately reread. In general I recommend totally discounting articles like this until you’ve read enough to have your own feel. Secondary sources are only to pique interest. They are almost always wrong.
- PradeetPatel 3y agoI'd strongly recommend his war memoir "Storm of Steel", essentially the war viewed through the eyes of an Imperial German officer. It provides a stark contrast to "All Quiet on the Western Front" - a more well-known novel on WW1 from a German perspective.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Amezarak 3y agoI always think it’s worth mentioning that All Quiet on the Western Front is a work of fiction, written by a guy who was on the front for about a month, at which time he was wounded and unable to return until a few weeks before the end of the war. Junger is writing a memoir based on the four years he was in the war, much of it at the front. I suspect Remarque gets more attention not because of greater literary merit, but because his sensibilities are easier for us to understand and better accord with that of our teachers. Junger is a much more alien read, and for that reason much more worthwhile.