What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you.

I finished reading Johnny Got His Gun last night, by Dalton Trumbo.

It was originally written in 1938 and made into a movie in 1970. It's a cautionary tale about the reality/brutality of war and it's interesting to see how it's been received by different generations and during different wars.

I found the author's comments in the introduction interesting, for they exhibit a postmodern perspective, before postmodernism was "cool."

In 1959 he wrote that he contemplated making revisions and updates to the book.

"After all, the book is twenty years younger than I, and I have changed so much, and it hasnt'. Or has it?

Is it possible for anything to resist change, even a mere commodity that can be bought, buried, banned, damned, praised, or ignored for all the wrong reasons? Probably not. Johnny held a different meaning for three different wars. Its present meaning is what each reader conceives it to be, and each reader is gloriously different from every other reader, and each is also changing.

I've let it remain as it was to see what it is."
-Dalton Trumbo, Los Angeles, March 25, 1959
(emphasis mine)

For those of you not familiar with a postmodern understanding of the text and meaning, this is a nice indicator of such a mindset.

Authorial intent is irrelevant. Each text is given meaning by the reader, each time the text is read. Meaning is created at that point.