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- 2026-01-27T17:17:08.782Z
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- 3488
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- 3339 as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out
3340 over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.
3341 I'm not kidding.
3342 After the movie was over, I started walking down to the Wicker Bar, where I was
3343 supposed to meet old Carl Luce, and while I walked I sort of thought about war and all.
3344 Those war movies always do that to me. I don't think I could stand it if I had to go to war.
3345 I really couldn't. It wouldn't be too bad if they'd just take you out and shoot you or
3346 something, but you have to stay in the Army so goddam long. That's the whole trouble.
3347 My brother D.B. was in the Army for four goddam years. He was in the war, too--he
3348 landed on D-Day and all--but I really think he hated the Army worse than the war. I was
3349 practically a child at the time, but I remember when he used to come home on furlough
3350 and all, all he did was lie on his bed, practically. He hardly ever even came in the living
3351 room. Later, when he went overseas and was in the war and all, he didn't get wounded or
3352 anything and he didn't have to shoot anybody. All he had to do was drive some cowboy
3353 general around all day in a command car. He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to
3354 shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was
3355 practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were. I remember Allie once asked him wasn't
3356 it sort of good that he was in the war because he was a writer and it gave him a lot to
3357 write about and all. He made Allie go get his baseball mitt and then he asked him who
3358 was the best war poet, Rupert Brooke or Emily Dickinson. Allie said Emily Dickinson. I
3359 don't know too much about it myself, because I don't read much poetry, but I do know it'd
3360 drive me crazy if I had to be in the Army and be with a bunch of guys like Ackley and
3361 Stradlater and old Maurice all the time, marching with them and all. I was in the Boy
3362 Scouts once, for about a week, and I couldn't even stand looking at the back of the guy's
3363 neck in front of me. They kept telling you to look at the back of the guy's neck in front of
3364 you. I swear if there's ever another war, they better just take me out and stick me in front
3365 of a firing squad. I wouldn't object. What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so
3366 much, and yet he got me to read this book A Farewell to Arms last summer. He said it
3367 was so terrific. That's what I can't understand. It had this guy in it named Lieutenant
3368 Henry that was supposed to be a nice guy and all. I don't see how D.B. could hate the
3369 Army and war and all so much and still like a phony like that. I mean, for instance, I don't
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