Johnny Got His Gun (1939) - Dalton Trumbo

Written by Dalton Trumbo
Read by William Dufris
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Tantor Media
Release date: September 18, 2008
Duration: 07:42:43

First published in 1939, Dalton Trumbo’s horriific story of a young American soldier terribly maimed in World War I - he “survives” armless, legless, and faceless, but with his mind intact —When he eventually learns to communicate again, no one wants to listen to what he has to say.

Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body.

Joe attempts suicide by suffocation, but finds that he has had a tracheotomy that he can neither remove nor control. At first Joe wishes to die, but he later decides that he desires to be placed in a glass box and toured around the country in order to show others the true horrors of war. …..As Joe drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war.

Dalton Trumbo’s stark, profoundly troubling masterpiece about the horrors of World War I brilliantly crystallized the uncompromising brutality of war and became the most influential protest novel of the Vietnam era. Johnny Got His Gun is an undisputed classic of antiwar literature that’s as timely as ever.

This audio edition of Trumbo’s classic 1939 novel of war’s insanity begins as a bit of a slog because of the lengthy padding at its start. With two introductions, from Cindy Sheehan and Ron Kovic, that attempt to place the novel in the context of more recent armed conflicts in both Iraq and Vietnam, it is the better part of a disc before the book properly begins. Once it does, though, the slog ceases. Trumbo’s novel is spine-tingling in its immediacy and horror, and William Dufris (while occasionally fumbling around in his bag of voices) mostly gives the words room to breathe. For this book, little more is necessary.

AudioFile was not as kind to the narrator—Using a forced tone of nostalgia and a hollow “epicness,” narrator William Dufris turns this classic into a gimmick. The rolling pitch and yawl of his inflection force the listener into elated highs and sappy lows, making this listen quite tedious. The poignancy, respect, and craft of the novel seem to have been ignored. M.U. (c) AudioFile 2008

Between 1940 and 2014 there have been numerous television adaptations, plays and films, in various languages. Dalton Trumble wrote the screenplay for the 1971 version I didn’t use the original book cover, it is nondescript orange chevron design with black letters.