is himself so angry – with his parents, his school-teachers, the artistic community and with
his lovers, as well as with the pre-war establishment – that his view is distorted. It makes for
some very entertaining, if heavy-handed, satire, but ultimately, it is not entirely honest. He
presents Winterbourne as a victim because he feels
himself
to be a victim. And that is not the
whole truth. His upbringing had left him with a crippling sense of self-pity that only surfaced
during his war experience, which
was
grim (and he did, unlike Sassoon, Graves and Blunden,
begin the war as a ranker and a pioneer). Furthermore, the war deprived him of a literary
world in which he had achieved some success and in which he felt himself to have a place;
Sassoon, Graves and Blunden had barely begun their poetic lives. Where the war enriched
their creativity, it crippled his, at least temporarily. They were unencumbered with personal
relationships – Blunden and Graves were only schoolboys – whereas Aldington had got
himself into an emotional mess which the war would aggravate, and for which he would pay
for the rest of his life.
VI
The first two parts of
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