Glory for Me

The year is 1945, and the war in Europe is over. Three soldiers from different branches of the American military find themselves sharing a plane back to their Midwestern hometown of Boone City. Twenty-one-year-old Fred Derry had a taste of the high life as well as the horror, stationed in London with the Air Force and running bombing missions over occupied territory; he looks forward to his reunion with the gorgeous, demanding Marie, whom he married impulsively before he left. Middle-aged infantry sergeant Alton Marrow Stephenson III returns to Milly, his devoted wife of over two decades, and their two children, and to a comfortable existence as assistant vice president of the Cornbelt Bank. Rounding out the trio is Homer Wermels, not yet twenty, who dropped out of high school to join the Navy, whose slurred speech and diminished motor control serve as a constant reminder of the night his ship was torpedoed off the coast of northern Africa; his thoughts are full of his mother's hearty cooking - and Wilma, the girl next door.Unfortunately, homecoming isn't quite what any of them had dreamed. The three men are reunited that very evening in a bar, where each of them came on his own to drink away his cares. Fred has discovered Marie in the arms of another man. Al's boss greeted him with a promotion to vice president in charge of loans, but Al finds himself dissatisfied with the prospect of returning to the work he once enjoyed. Homer simply can't bear his family's obvious horror and pity. They boarded the plane as strangers, but they leave the bar as brothers, their fast friendship a bright spot in the midst of hardships they hadn't imagined. Fred reluctantly goes back to work at the drugstore, but feels the job is beneath him now, and the salary is pitiful, especially now that he's set his eye - and heart - on Al's daughter Peggy. Al finds it hard to be patient with bank customers whose problems seem petty to him now, and his boss has had to speak to him about his inability to turn down a fellow veteran for a loan whether or not he's a good investment. Homer discovers that alcohol seems to briefly relieve his spasticity, and he spends more and more of his time at the bar. All three men are haunted by memories - of the constant presence of death, of comrades who never came home.MacKinlay Kantor never served in the military, but he knew his subject. He served as a war correspondent in London, flying with several bombing missions, interviewing wounded men, and even learning how to operate the machine guns in a bomber (knowledge he put to good use in the creation of Air Force bombardier Fred Derry). When Samuel Goldwyn sought him out at the end of the war to write a screenplay about the challenges facing homecoming veterans, Kantor took the job; some months later, he presented Goldwyn with "Glory for Me," a 250-page novel in blank(ish) verse. Bemused, Goldwyn passed the lengthy poem to screenwriter Robert Sherwood, and in 1946, the movie (with some details changed, much to Kantor's displeasure) was released as "The Best Years of Our Lives." This movie, of course, is still regarded as one of the classics of American cinema, while "Glory for Me," published in 1945, is long out of print and remembered as little more than a footnote in the annals of cinematic history.This is unfortunate, because "Glory for Me" is a splendid work of art in its own right. The characters are deftly rendered in a few vivid strokes of language; Kantor has an eye for the small, telling detail. I mourned and rejoiced with Al, Fred, and Homer as Kantor drew me deeply into their thoughts and feelings, and when the book ended I was sorry to have to let them go. Nearly every page has something on it you'd like to underline - some sudden truth, or felicitous turn of phrase. (And for the record, no, of course I didn't - I don't even mark up books that aren't antiques.) Kantor's treatment of the horrors of war is unsparing: there are severed testicles here, parachutes burning in midair, desperate lusty liaisons under a canopy of mortality. There's nothing gratuitous here, though; Kantor packs more of a shock into his understated nightmares than he could have by wallowing in gory detail, and he manages to convey the crudeness of soldierly banter without being crude himself. Realism has rarely been so elegant."Glory for Me" is divided into a number of short chapters (cantos?), with Kantor's focus shifting often among his characters, and the narration occasionally slipping into first person for a chapter, but it's never difficult to keep track of what's going on or who's speaking. The narrative-poem format does take some getting used to, but the novelty wears off soon enough as you're drawn in by the characters. At worst, the verse is mildly distracting; at best, the rhythm of the language pounds the meaning into you and sears it forever into your soul. Several chapters are so beautifully written, and sufficiently independent of the plot, that they could easily stand on their own as works of art. Take this, from the evening the men arrive home in Boone City:When you come out of War to quiet streetsYou lug your War along with you.You walk a snail-path. On your back you carry it -A scaly load that makes your shoulders raw;And not a hand can ever lift the shellThat cuts your hide. You only wear it off yourself -Look up one day, and vaguely see it gone.You do not see yourself in malformation.The men and girls who have no shellsOf War upon their backs - You count them well deformed.You recognize the other snails by eyes or ribbons;You speak your perfect language to their ears,And they to yours. You look with solemn eyeOn those without a shell. You do not scorn,You do not hate, you do not love them for it.You only say, "They have no shell."With other snails you crawl the quiet streetAnd wonder why you're there,And think of folks who aren't.You polish up your shell for prideUntil you tire of it.And one day it is gone if you are wise."Glory for Me" is a delightful story, an experience of beauty, and an exercise in empathy. It deserves to be back in print. It deserves to be read by everyone without a shell.

"Glory for Me" is the book-length narrative poem by MacKinlay Kantor which eventually became the movie "The Best Years of Our Lives." The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, for 1946. It starred Frederick March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell.In 1970, I was a lieutenant working at the Air Force Historical Research Center. The older historians told a word-of-mouth story how the book came to be. No doubt the story had been embroidered over many years of retelling, but here's the way I heard it.In 1944, movie titan Samuel Goldwyn knew that whether the allied victory in World War II would come sooner, or later, millions of American veterans would return home. Many -- especially those with physical and psychological wounds -- would have trouble finding jobs and "readjusting."Goldwyn knew that journalist and playwright MacKinlay Kantor, who had flown missions with the 305th Bomb Group from England earlier in the war, had gotten to know American servicemen in combat at first hand. Goldwyn asked Kantor to write a screenplay for a planned movie on the veterans returning home.According to the story, Kantor had driven up to a Tennessee mountain retreat to work on the screenplay. He took his typewriter and a case of bourbon. He emerged some months later with empty bottles and "Glory for Me," written in the form of a narrative poem, not a screenplay. Goldwyn was not pleased, and he eventually gave Kantor's poem to Robert Sherwood to reshape for the screen. When the film finally appeared, Kantor was given a minimum of credit. Sherwood -- deservedly -- won the Oscar for Best Writing.Those, like myself, who come to "Glory for Me" via "The Best Years of Our Lives" will be richly rewarded by reading the poem.Kantor's and Sherwood's treatments of the same characters and the same American town ("Boone City") shows two gifted men working the same basic story in different literary forms, poem and screenplay. Reading the book allows one to discover how, here and there, they made some different creative choices.In Kantor's poem, Homer's disability is spasticity, which makes for some painful reading. Sherwood gave Homer a physical disability -- loss of hands and the use of prosthetic hooks. Sherwood's choice was a wise one for the moviegoing public, and few are the hearts not moved by Harold Russell's portrayal of Homer in the film. But Kantor's portrayal of Homer and his girl Wilma are equally moving, perhaps because the poem gave more room for character development.When Frederick March played Al Stephenson -- the older sergeant returning to his prewar life as a banker at the Cornbelt Trust Company -- he masterfully compressed much of Kantor's material in eloquent but short scenes. In Kantor's fuller telling of the story, Al was the son of a pioneer banker who had made loans to farmers a generation earlier. The poem has more social and historical texture.In Kantor's poem, Homer's uncle Butch (Hoagy Carmichael's character in the movie) provides a vehicle to explore class feelings in pre- and post-war America. This was one of Kantor's themes that Sherwood could not fit into the film. Similarly, Kantor told his readers more about Novak (the veteran asking for a loan to open a nursery) and his experiences as a Seabee in the Pacific. Kantor's use of lilacs as a metaphor for peace and normality could not be picked up in the film.On the other hand, Sherwood changed the story line to say more about wartime marriages. Marie (Virginia Mayo in the film) proves shallow and unfaithful when Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) returns home. The movie's title, not found in Kantor's poem, came from a scene when the two argued.The book was published in January, 1945, months before the war ended. Kantor well anticipated the major contours of veteran adjustment, but there was more to his foresight. On the final page of the poem he showed real prescience when he alluded to the unresolved social tensions that all Americans, not just the veterans, would confront in the coming years.Reading habits have changed in the six decades since the book was published, and readers may now find that it takes some pages to adjust to the poetic form. Kantor's poetic shortcomings earned some dismissive reviews. Poems similar in form by Kantor's contemporaries like Stephen Vincent Benet are now dismissed as middlebrow when they are read at all. I am confident, though, that with each page the reader will find new lines and new scenes to savor and treasure."The Best Years of Our Lives" is a truly great American movie. "Glory for Me" deserves equal recognition. Kantor recognized the coming drama of the returning veterans. He dignified their individual struggles in a literary form that recalled the great epics and placed the American veterans among mankind's heroes. He gave an immortal film -- a film that affected tens of millions -- its basic structure, plot, characters, tone, and feeling.Not a bad result for a few months of solitude with a case of bourbon.-30-

Have you seen the film THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES? Well...that’s a great film for sure: and THIS is the novel — written in BLANK VERSE! — it’s based on. Like any film based on a novel, they are two different things (and that’s a good thing; a film and a novel are two different art forms which can do — and can’t do — different things)...but, in general, the novel can dig deeper. That’s certainly true here; and it takes a lot of Moxie to think of writing a novel in blank verse at any time...the chances of it turning into just some arty BS is EXTREMELY HIGH. Point is: this isn’t: it is genuinely an American epic poem, all the more remarkable for being written at the time of the events it chronicles (history is difficult to write at any time....catching the Zeitgeist IN the time you are writing of is incredibly difficult). Almost all of the story will be recognizable to those who know the film; there are some significant difference, particularly towards the end....in every instance I credit the film makers with good judgement in making the alterations they did, at the time they did: which doesn’t stop me from saying the author’s original version — as it appears on the page — is FAR more moving. THIS IS A GREAT AMERICAN EPIC POEM/NOVEL — it should be being taught in every college English course, and in the AP HS English classes as well: there is nothing here which cannot be completely understood and appreciated by an intelligent adolescent. We have wrongly forgotten this gem. Let those that have eyes see.

Arrived promptly and in perfect condition and was as pleasing to read as expected