End as a Man

by Calder Willingham

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0917657683
• ISBN13: 9780917657689
• Release Date: May 1986
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating.A true find.A Triumphant Escape From the Banal!

The novel boast's three movie versions (that i'm aware of ),yet it still remains a rather obscure yet critically reknown work from an equally reknown yet sadly underrated author.The movie version ''The Strange One'' (1957),(the only one I've actually watched)Faithfully does justice to the subject matter of this story which is more powerfull in it's essence than the writing allow's for .The novel itsself while unflinching in some part's remains merely frank in others leaving stale,uneven gaps amidst blisteringly moving accounts of the aeshetic cult that raw, youthfull, brutish power often surrounds itself with.This amongst the backdrop of an age old tradition peculiar to the south,the military school,and an even older one the symbollic bizarre ''right of passage''/ to end as a man.Hence the title.More than some mere physical transformation is at stake the spirit and above all honor must be transformed as well. and this is the true genius of the story it painfully and unflatteringly reveals the true face of an all to modern nihilistic evil in icecold christalline detail in the visages of the upperclass-cadet's ,unforgettable charachter's like Jocko Deparis and his machiavellian like dark eminence over other,'underclassmen'.This novel was written shortly after WWII.A war most notable for the most charasmatic, ultimately self-destructive despot personality the world has ever known.Infact the entire century could be said to belong to this man.Adolf Hitler.Willingham himself explained his own struggle to come to grips,in this novel,with not only what has so uniquely affected our past but indeed our forseeable future.that was true then and remains true today.End as a Man is at it's very essence about the struggle to power and the cult of personality.It's no masterpeiece,but it is everybit as worthy of the praise salinger gets for 'catcher in the rye'.It's a minor classic with i hope a 'cult' following (in the best sense)as enthusiastic and worthy as is necessary to propel it into even greater spheres of discussion. END