A native of Mobile, AL, William March (1893-1954) studied law at The University of Alabama. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I, he worked as an executive with the Waterman Steamship Corporation and published novels and short stories. Writer and critic Alistair Cooke described March as 'the unrecognized genius of our time.' Philip D. Beidler is Professor of English at The University of Alabama and author of Rewriting America: Vietnam Authors in their Generation.
"A rich novel, . . . the outstanding virtues of March's work are
those of complete lack of sentimentality and routine romanticism,
of a dramatic gift constantly heightened and sharpened by eloquence
of understatement."
--New York Times
"A sardonic minor masterpiece on World War I, . . . Company K
observes all the antiheroic conventions of the between-wars
decades; yet author March was himself a Marine Corps noncom wounded
three times, who won a D.S.C., Navy Cross, and Croix de Guerre, and
had every right to the bitter pity with which he wrote his novel.
Among its 113 characters, every military type is represented--the
good soldier, the coward, the goldbrick, the rank-happy shavetail,
the lucky, and the wound-prone. Each is caught in one lurid moment
of his life, as if March had composed by the light of a Very
pistol."
--Time
"March's book has the force of a mob-protest; an outcry from
anonymous throats. It is the only War-book I have read which has
found a new form to fit the novelty of the protest. The prose is
bare, lucid, without literary echoes."
--Graham Greene in The Spectator
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
