Paul Fussell
| Paul Fussell | |
|---|---|
Lt. Paul Fussell in Paris, France, May 1945
|
|
| Born |
22 March 1924 Pasadena, California |
| Died | 23 May 2012 (aged 88) Medford, Oregon |
| Occupation | Educator; historian; social critic; author |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
Pomona College (B.A.), Harvard University (MA), (PhD) |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Notable awards |
Literary: National Book Award; National Book Critics Circle Award; Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. |
| Years active | 1951–2003 |
| Spouse |
Betty Fussell (1949–1981; divorced), Harriette Behringer (?-2012; his death) |
| Children | Rosalind Fussell, Samuel Wilson Fussell |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |
 United States of America
|
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | Purple Heart; Bronze Star |
Paul Fussell, Jr. (22 March 1924 – 23 May 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary on America's class system. Fussell served in the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II and was wounded in fighting in France. Returning to the US, Fussell wrote extensively and held several faculty positions, most prominently at Rutgers University (1955-1983) in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is best known for his writings about World War I and II, which explore what he felt was the gap between the romantic myth and reality of war; he made a "career out of refusing to disguise it or elevate it".
Born and raised in Pasadena, California, Fussell was the second of three children. His father, Paul Fussell (1895–1973), son of a widowed schoolteacher, became a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles with the firm of O'Melveny & Myers. His mother, Wilhma Wilson Sill (1893–1971), was the daughter of a carriage trimmer in Illinois. His brother, Edwin Sill Fussell, was an author, poet, and professor of American Studies at the University of California, San Diego; his sister Florence Fussell Lind lives in Berkeley, California.
His daughter, Rosalind, is an artist-teacher in Arizona and the author of a graphic novel, Mammoir: A Pictorial Odyssey of the Adventures of a Fourth Grade Teacher with Breast Cancer. His son, Samuel Wilson Fussell, a writer and hunter in Montana, is the author of Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder.
Fussell attended Pomona College from 1941 until he was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army in 1943. He landed in France in 1944 as a 20-year-old second lieutenant with the 103rd Infantry Division (45th Infantry Division, according to Fussell in his article on the atom bomb in The New Republic, 1981) and was wounded while fighting in Alsace, and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946, returned to Pomona to finish his B.A. degree in 1946-7, married fellow Pomona graduate Betty Harper in 1949, and completed his MA (1949) and PhD (1952) at Harvard University.
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