From time to time I am seized by Civil War fever and read a book about the Civil War. This time I picked up, more or less at random, a book called Bruce Catton’s Civil War. This book is Catton’s three most popular books about the Civil War bound as one: Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1951), Glory Road (1952), and A Stillness at Appomattox (1953).
Catton was a newspaper journalist, not a professional historian. He became interested in the Civil War as a child growing up in Michigan, where there were still living a few veterans of the war, most of them eager to talk about their experiences. Catton liked to listen to them tell their stories. After service in the Navy in WWII, he began to write books about the Civil War. His books became popular with the reading public, which responded to his gifts as a storyteller.
But during all the half century that I have been interested in the Civil War, I have chosen not to read Catton. I am a snob. What appeals to the hoi polloi is not for me.
Except that now, I have started to read Catton — out of curiosity, of course. How bad are his books?
I can’t judge how good they are as history, not being a historian. But as a snobbish judge of writing, I am surprised by the quality of the writing. Catton’s prose is clear and elegant, and for the most part he avoids the cliches that swarm over much of what is written about the Civil War. He also avoids occasions of melodrama, not bothering for example to describe the meeting of Grant and Lee at Appomattox; he describes only Grant hurrying off to meet Lee.
He has his critics. Gore Vidal wrote that Catton is a “hagiographic” historian in the school of Parson Weems, author of the myth about Washington and the cherry tree. I haven’t gotten far enough into Bruce Catton’s Civil War to know whether Vidal’s criticism is just. I’m betting that it is; the public likes its history cosy and edifying. I told you I’m a snob. And Catton isn’t an analytic historian, the critics say, condemning him for not being what he never intended to be.
Even so, I’m impressed by the quality of Catton’s prose. It is of a much higher literary quality than even the more serious works of history appearing today, which are written in the style of superior magazine articles. Contemporary prose is written to be skimmed; the reading public is a public of skimmers. Books today must be grateful that a few people, at least, are taking time from their streaming movies to read them.
As time moves on, Bruce Catton’s books are being read by fewer and fewer people, or so I’ve read. I’m not surprised. But then, I’m a snob.
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I’ve never read Catton but he sounds as if he’s worth a try. I, too, like books about that period of desperation. (I’d rather not be in the middle of desperation myself — I freely admit it.) By the way, for those who like reading about World War II, I’m reminded of another reporter John recommended some time ago, Eric Severeid, whose autobiography “Not So Wild a Dream” is an excellent read, and what a great stylist he was. Many reporters from that time wrote very well. But then, they were inveterate readers.
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He’s no Tacitus or Gibbon. I was just struck by how much better written his books are than most things today. I’m sure writers today have to take into account the limited time, patience, and experience of books that readers have today.
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