![]() Cobb’s careful representations of the state of humanity, the use of institutionalized terror, and the savagery of modern war making are all appropriate reflections on what he experienced as a young man in the trenches of World War I. To say that Paths of Glory is a novel ahead of its time is problematic, however. Indeed, given how little mankind truly learned from the charnel house that was the twentieth century, Cobb may have given us a blueprint for human suffering that will carry us through the next hundred years as well. ![]() He told us of men devoured by the very institutions they served, without recourse, and for purposes petty, mechanical, and abstract. Humphrey Cobb gave us our last, failed century in a single, basic narrative. What follows is reprinted with the permission of Penguin’s editors. I also had the chance to meet and shake the hand of Mr. ![]() I was honored to be asked to write an introduction to the Penguin Classic edition of a reissued “Paths of Glory,” one of the great literary legacies of the First World War and a novel that remains essential reading, I believe, in this new century. ![]()
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