It will transform your life.No, Dalton Trumbo isn't missing the punctuation keys on his typewriter. Sorry to be sarcastic but the question is irrelevant for this book. I am not good enough in Morse Code to communicate with Joe. Joe Bonham was being fed through a gastro-tube. If you could take any character from Johnny Got His Gun out to dinner, who would it be and why?ĭumb question. The vividness of the wording and the pictures that came to mind, making it feel real. The question is 'Written by whom and about what?' A more significant work of literature is yet to be written. In an era where politics have become so polarized and laden with jargon, 'Johnny Got His Gun' is a book, which can withstand any pro-war propaganda and end up demonstrating that most wars are fought at the sole expense of the man (and now some women) who are where the lead meets flesh. Anyone who claims to be human should dedicate the minimal time needed to experience the stark, rich and artful portrayal of the human aberration called 'war' and the ultimate ugly result it can create. Trumbo's 'Johnny Got His Gun' is, in a serious way, equivalent in impact to 'Catch 22' from Joseph Heller. Dalton Trumbo's genius and courage are benchmarks for any author or script-writer who even dreams of composing a story that deals with the consequences of war.

Every single page brings some poignant reason why life and the living are important and how absolutely obscene is war. Yes- the oration is as excellent as the written work. Would you listen to Johnny Got His Gun again? Why? People who have read a book or have seen a movie or play should NEVER give anything away that might change the experience for others. It ruined the anticipation for a whole generation of people who had not seen the movie. The last plate of the cartoon had Lucy telling Linus, 'Rosebud is. It reminds me of the time in the early to mid 70's when Charles Schultz ran a Sunday cartoon featuring Lucy and Linus watching 'Citizen Cane' on TV.

But, alas, I will have to wait awhile before I take it up again. As soon as I realized what was happening to ME as I was listening to the introduction I turned it off and found the beginning of the book. It set HER tone, justified though it might be, not mine. It just didn't belong at the beginning of a book that I wanted to discover for myself. I'm not saying that her outrage is unjustified. It also gave away much more of the plot than I remember from the movie and certainly more than I wanted to hear before reading the book myself. Unfortunately, I didn't know (or didn't pay attention to) the fact that there was to be an introduction by a mother who had lost her son in Iraq that was intended to create a sense of the outrage she felt at losing her son in a war that was unjustified. I finally purchased it from Audible a few days ago. I saw the movie in 1971 when I was a teenager and had wanted to read the book ever since.

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