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98 - Final Harbor Question 2
A large part of the book was the war bond campaign back home, and the romance blooming between Hinman and Richards. Is this and aspect of the war you are familiar with? Do you think it worked? Thoughts about this are welcome!
Comments
It was an unusual choice in a war story. As a piece of fiction, I think it mostly worked, even if the romance part was treated superficially.
What I found interesting was the different civilian attitudes towards war between what was portrayed in the book vs what I know of the British response. I don't know much about how British people thought about Germany in 1938-9, but once WWII started, I think the majority of people agreed that the war needed to be fought. That's a very different attitude from the one given in the book, with many US civilians not wanting to get involved in a foreign war.
I'll also say, I have no idea how accurate my impressions are, of either British or US attitudes at the time!
Not only was there a high level of support in the US for neutrality, there was a shocking amount of support for Hitler.
The UK had it's fair share of fascists and supporters (Mosely and the blackshirts). Some are still with us (the Daily Mail newspaper, the royal family).
The specific contrast between war actions and homeland romance is, I think, fairly common. Douglas Reeman (who wrote WW2 and modern naval fiction under that name, and Napoleonic-era naval fiction under the name Alexander Kent) almost always included the on-shore romance, though typically this had the added dimension of making for division between the captain (successful in romance) and one or other of his senior officers (interested in the same woman but unsuccessful).
So for me, this aspect of the plot was quite normal (and just as superficial and predictable as seems to be usual for war novels
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Like @NeilNjae I had no idea about the fund-raising side of US WW2 history - if I had thought about it at all I just assumed that the US raised taxes like anybody else! So that whole need to publicise the war effort was new to me, and (I felt) was handled convincingly.
I was specifically asking about the fund raising. The romance was expected and telegraphed flagrantly, and the book would work just as well without it.
When it comes to naval fiction, or indeed military fiction in general, I've mostly read Napoleonic - Forester, O'Brien, Kent, and Cornwell. There's always romance on the side. But this book had so much more than than romance, because it was tempered by women's lib on the one hand, and by brothels on the other ('you only get 3 minutes, and if you can't finish in 3 minutes you can book another visit'), so I thought the treatment was unusual. And since Homewood lived through it, I figured it was all real slice-of-life kind of stuff and pretty accurate. It's a far cry from the stories I've heard from vets about meeting and eventually marrying their spouses.
And as for the fund raising, It's not an aspect I'm particularly familiar with, so I found that refreshing. It's a bit surprising in a way, given how Americans have treated the war in film since the war ended - you'd almost never know they didn't enthusiastically jump into it right from the start.
The Anglo-Canadian attitude, so far as I'm aware, was very different. I understand that we jumped in even when the Brits told us we weren't needed. Except in Quebec, where resistance was very strong, and it was also seen as a foreign war. I suppose if one had to draw on stereotypes, the British would all be generals or tommies, the Americans would all be maverick heroes, and the Canadians would be logistics officers.
Yes, absolutely! My parents told me about war bonds when I was a kid and I was astonished that such a thing existed! Why didn't they sell war bonds for Vietnam? Then those who supported the war could put their money where their mouth was. Why didn't they sell space bonds to finance NASA?
It worked as a way to paint the attitudes of the time. As a plot it was all too easy. The protagonist turns out to be kind of a natural at everything and even his mistakes are brilliant. Oh, and the hot, independent, smart woman basically shoves him into bed and then marries him and becomes a perfect Navy wife. Again - two authors. One that is lazy with his characters and their challenges (reminds me of Dan Brown or Clive Cussler) and another who is showing us interesting stuff about WWII - subs and politics.