"novel" = book-length prose account

[Beverly Flanigan]

You're very kind, Larry!

At 02:53 PM 2/1/2005, you wrote:
>At 2:25 PM -0500 2/1/05, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>>Ah well, what do professors know?
>
>Perhaps what this professor of English literature didn't know is not
>that novels are [+ fictional] but just that Caputo's _A Rumor of War_
>isn't a novel.  Caputo is generally known as a novelist and in
>particular the author of Vietnam War novels.  Maybe Prof. Schumaker
>hadn't quite gotten around to actually *reading* this memoir before
>producing the annotation on his web site--which, it will be noted,
>comes in the middle of a list of annotations of war novels of the
>fictional variety, including _All Quiet on the Western Front_ and
>_Slaughterhouse Five_.  Or, assuming absent-mindedness rather than
>laziness, he'd read it but just assimilated it to the novels on his
>list.  (I can imagine committing either of these sins more easily
>than that of reanalyzing the lexical entry for _novel_.)  On the
>other hand, the very next entry on Prof. Schumaker's reading list
>after _A Rumor of War_ is a novel (or at least a "novel") by a North
>Vietnamese author, _The Sorrow of War_, which is described as "the
>perfect pendent [sic] to Caputo's novel", which makes one wonder.
>
>L
>
>>
>>At 08:59 PM 1/31/2005, you [= Jon L.] wrote:
>>>This has been discussed before, but here is an indisputable citation from
>>>a professor of English literature.
>>>
>>>
>>>"[Philip] Caputo's novel ["A Rumor of War"] is arguably the best US novel
>>>of the Vietnam War.  A USMC officer in the first US Marine brigade to
>>>arrive in Danang, Caputo's experience mirrors that of the whole country in
>>>the late 60's.
>>>"Paper Two due at the end of this novel"
>>>
>>>             ---Richard Schumaker, University of Maryland, European
>>>Division. http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~rschumak/    (then press "war and
>>>literature").
>>>
>>>"A Rumor of War" (1977) is an autobiographical account, catalogued by the
>>>L of C under "Biography" and "Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975, Personal
>>>narratives--American."
>>>
>>>JL