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I've got Jay Lewis Taylor dropping in next week as my guest, but I'm giving a sneak preview by featuring one of his answers here, as it's relevant to the theme. I asked him, "Why do you think readers and viewers are still fascinated by depictions of war on the page and on screen?"
Is it war itself, or is it the World Wars, because those are "our" wars, in which our parents and grandparents were evacuees or served, whether in uniform or on the home front? It must be different if you're Scandinavian, when your war was a different war in terms of what went on. Or, what do our wars mean to someone from ... let's say, Tierra del Fuego?
The two world wars are part of the cultural baggage, if you like, of most of my potential readership, and because of that I'm lucky. For myself, I think the fascination is that, take me back a century, take me back 80 years, there is no way in which I would be in the armed forces, with my disability. Writing about it is a way I can put myself in that position and ask, what would I do? How would I behave? In real life, assuming I survived and got an education, perhaps I could have been one of the backroom boys somehow – who knows? But that's the fascination: what was it like? Could I have done it? How did people cope?
I don't think I could put it better myself. I'd like to add that for WWI there's also a sense - at least for me - of tragic loss, of lives cut short before their promise was fulfilled. But maybe that's my maternal streak (which Jay often comments on) coming out.
Is it war itself, or is it the World Wars, because those are "our" wars, in which our parents and grandparents were evacuees or served, whether in uniform or on the home front? It must be different if you're Scandinavian, when your war was a different war in terms of what went on. Or, what do our wars mean to someone from ... let's say, Tierra del Fuego?
The two world wars are part of the cultural baggage, if you like, of most of my potential readership, and because of that I'm lucky. For myself, I think the fascination is that, take me back a century, take me back 80 years, there is no way in which I would be in the armed forces, with my disability. Writing about it is a way I can put myself in that position and ask, what would I do? How would I behave? In real life, assuming I survived and got an education, perhaps I could have been one of the backroom boys somehow – who knows? But that's the fascination: what was it like? Could I have done it? How did people cope?
I don't think I could put it better myself. I'd like to add that for WWI there's also a sense - at least for me - of tragic loss, of lives cut short before their promise was fulfilled. But maybe that's my maternal streak (which Jay often comments on) coming out.
