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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780817304805
ISBN: 0817304800
Label: University Alabama Press
Manufacturer: University Alabama Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: October 24, 1989
Publisher: University Alabama Press
Sales Rank: 79751
Studio: University Alabama Press
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Product Description:
This book was originally published in 1933. It is the first novel by William March, pen name for William Edward Campbell. Stemming directly from the author’s experiences with the U.S. Marines in France during World War I, the book consists of 113 sketches, or chapters, tracing the fictional Company K’s war exploits and providing an emotional history of the men of the company that extends beyond the boundaries of the war itself. William Edward Campbell served courageously in France as evidenced by his chestful of medals and certificates, including the Croix de Guerre, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Navy Cross. However, without the medals and citations we would know of his bravery. For it is clear in the pages of Company K that this book was written by a man who had been to war, who had clearly seen his share of the worst of it, who had somehow survived, and who had committed himself afterward to the new bravery of sense-making embodied in the creation of major literary art. It is of that bravery that we still have the record of magnificent achievement, the brave terrible gift of Company K. 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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The Most Underrated of ALL War Novels
Do not take it from me, Graham Greene, one of the most respected names in Twentieth Century Fiction hails March's "Company K" as the greatest of all anti-war novels, while Hemingway thought it superior to almost all other WWI novels. This novel is not an almost-classic, it is a classic, borrowing the format made popular by Edgar Lee Masters, March expounds on the concept of individual soldier stories encompassing the full breath of the war. This novel is as appropriate now as it ever was in the post-WWI era. This novel is a must read for anyone remotely concerned with WWI and the impact war has on the survivors.
Rating:  - Almost a Classic
March makes a compelling case in this text that he should be well entrenched in the second tier of American authors, if not the first. His WWI recollections do a fine job of bringing out the terrors and guilts of a war long forgotton and little remembered, except for the short period of the Twenties. If there is any shortcoming in this fine work, it is that it draws far too much from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthologies. My guess is that March, who was trained as a lawyer like Masters (a former partner of the unethical (...) Clarence Darrow) grasped onto Masters' then-current work . It's not a heroic idea, but one that's occurred to me. In any event, Company K is a work that ought to be read far more than it is a century later. WWI [is] seldom remembered as the great trauma that it was in the US. Here's a book that tells how bad it was, and more importantly, why.
Rating: - a surprisingly modern old book
This edition of "Company K," by William March (a native of Mobile, graduate of The University of Alabama's law school, and WW I veteran), is one in a series called The Library of Alabama Classics, and it warrants its status as a classic. It's a beautiful little book, nicely typeset in a somewhat nostalgic manner, and deserves to be better known than it is--as does its author. Kudos to Alabama's UP for making this book available in paperback for a wide audience.
The book, first published in 1933, is a collection of short first-person narratives by the members of a company caught in the frontline in the first World War. Remarkable is March's ability to place himself (and the reader) in the positions of a great many very different characters--the company is a cross section of American society. This, his first novel, shows that March is an intelligent and sensitive storyteller.
More remarkable, perhaps, is how easily this book might be hypertexted--since all the narratives intersect, and various characters appear in various guises in other's narratives, it would lend itself easily to an HTML version in which a reader could click their way through the book without having to follow the book's order. Surely March must have seen this as a possible way of reading, since the chapter headings are the characters' names, allowing a reader of the book to easily flip from one character to another. The book, which seems to be suitable more for a spatial than a chronological way of reading, ... Read More
Rating: - a classic veteran's tale from WW1
Slaughterhouse-five, and Catch-22 both borrowed from a powerful predecessor. Company-k is a simple read, short chapters each one a character of many narratives. Each one an insightful and heart-rending tale. It would be easy to ignore Company-K and most don't know it - except that it's written by a man who was there. Hemingway glorified war made it seem almost fun - March tells it as it was. Only Johnny Got His Gun, and All Quite On the Western Front come close to this passionate and shocking book.
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