No More Parades by Ford Madox Ford (top 10 books to read TXT) 📕
Description
No More Parades is the second in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End series. The book, released just a few years after the close of the war, is based on Ford’s combat experiences as an enlisted man in World War I, and continues the story first begun in Some Do Not ….
Christopher Tietjens, after recovering from the shell shock he suffered in Some Do Not …, has returned to the edge of the war as a commanding officer in charge of preparing draft troops for deployment to the front. As the “last true Tory,” Tietjens demonstrates talent bordering on genius as he struggles against the laziness, incompetence, and confusion of the army around him—but his troubles only begin when his self-centered and scandalous wife Sylvia appears at his base in Rouen for a surprise visit.
Unlike Some Do Not …, which was told in a highly modernist series of flash-backs and flash-forwards, Parade’s End is a much more straightforward narrative. Despite this, the characters continue to be realized in an incredibly complex and nuanced way. Tietjens, almost a caricature of the stiff, honorable English gentleman, stoically absorbs the problems and suffering of those around him. Ford simultaneously paints him as an almost Christlike character and an immature, idealistic schoolboy, eager to keep up appearances despite the ruination it causes the people around him. Sylvia, his wife, has had her affairs and scandals, and is clearly a selfish and trying personality; but her powerful charm, and her frustration with both her almost comically stiff-lipped husband and the war’s interruption of civilization, lends her a not-unsympathetic air. The supporting cast of conscripts and officers is equally well-realized, with each one protraying a separate aspect of war’s effect on regular, scared people simply doing their best.
The novel was extremely well-reviewed in its time, and it and the series it’s a part of remain one of the most important novels written about World War I.
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- Author: Ford Madox Ford
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The building paused, as when a godhead descends. In breathless focusing of eyes the godhead, frail and shining, walked with short steps up to a high-priest who had a walrus moustache and, with seven medals on his Sunday tunic, gazed away into eternity. The general tapped the sergeant’s Good Conduct ribbon with the heel of his crop. All stretched ears heard him say:
“How’s your sister, Case? …”
Gazing away, the sergeant said:
“I’m thinking of making her Mrs. Case …”
Slightly leaving him, in the direction of high, varnished pitch-pine panels, the general said:
“I’ll recommend you for a Quartermaster’s commission any day you wish … Do you remember Sir Garnet inspecting field kitchens at Quetta?”
All the white tubular beings with global eyes resembled the pierrots of a child’s Christmas nightmare. The general said: “Stand at ease, men … Stand easy!” They moved as white objects move in a childish dream. It was all childish. Their eyes rolled.
Sergeant Case gazed away into infinite distance.
“My sister would not like it, sir,” he said. “I’m better off as a first-class warrant officer!”
With his light step the shining general went swiftly to the varnished panels in the eastern aisle of the cathedral. The white figure beside them became instantly tubular, motionless and global-eyed. On the panels were painted: Tea! Sugar! Salt! Curry pdr! Flour! Pepper!
The general tapped with the heel of his crop on the locker-panel labelled Pepper: the top, right-hand locker-panel. He said to the tubular, global-eyed white figure beside it: “Open that, will you, my man? …”
To Tietjens this was like the sudden bursting out of the regimental quickstep, as after a funeral with military honours the band and drums march away, back to barracks.
ColophonNo More Parades
was published in 1925 by
Ford Madox Ford.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2007 for
Project Gutenberg Australia
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
The Second Battle of Ypres,
a painting completed in 1916 by
Richard Jack.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 1, 2021, 10:26 p.m.
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