Diana Manister wrote:
>
> Perhaps it is the scale of modern warfare that makes it impossible to
> process as an experience, particularly by participants. André Breton
> saw first-hand the incoherent madness suffered by combat soldiers in a
> mental hospital in which he served on the medical staff,

We discussed this book on the list several years ago. The author,
Jonathan Shay is both an M.D. (psychiatry) and a Ph.D. (classics). He
runs a clinic in which he treated many Vietnam vets for PTSD. He
discusses as particulary toxic the combination exhibited in the Iliad:
(1) betrayal by a superior and (b) the death of a comrade. It's one of
the best books to come out of the Vietnam War. (Others are Bruce
Franklin, M.I.A., or Mythmaking in America, and W.D. Ehrhart, ed.,
Carrying the Darkness: The Poetry of the Vietnam War.)

Carrol

P.S. I can't resist a bit of nostalgia. Bruce Franklin & I nearly caused
a riot in the lobby of the Americana Hotel at the 1968 MLA convention.
We stood in the lobby and began to chant Drop the Charges, and soon
about 200 people joined us. Most fun I've ever had. (Louis Kampf, Lit
dept. Chair at MIT, and two grad students had been arrested for
trespassing for standing at the door of the hotel holding signs with
quotations from Blake on them.)