The Enormous Room (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

Perhaps the fact that, as I view this item, there is only one copy left in stock speaks volumes about the story itself. In continuous print since its original publication in 1921 (or 1922, I can never remember precisely), The Enormous Room is Cummings' tale of his ordeal as a prisoner of the French government during WWI. Cummings & his friend, William Slater Brown, being pacifists volunteered to drive ambulances for a French company. However, when they found that the paranoid French were heavily censoring their letters home & were spying on the foreign nationals that worked for them, Brown in particular began to include many salacious bits in his letters in order that he might really raise the ire of the censors, never thinking that he & his friend could be arrested for sedition or whatever it was that they were charged with. For four months, Cummings spent time in the grueling hell of La Ferte Mace, suffering greatly at the hands of the French who were supposed to be our allies.Still, rather than see this as a moment to whine about his predicament, Cummings instead employed his usual individualist outlook onto the situation. As only Cummings can, he brings to life his experience through his use of language--his characteristically lyrical English with liberal doses of his aurally received French sprinkled throughout. This edition has a handy glossary at the back to help with the translation of the massive amount of French in the book, & it also contains the original illustrations, restored to the text as Cummings himself had wanted. The use of French is interesting in itself because of how Cummings & Brown would learn the language. At the outset, their adventure begins in chaos as they are lost in Paris with no way to find their ambulance company headquarters (not that they had the desire to find their post, either). During this time, they learned French while spending time with "ladies of the evening" in the Parisian pubs of the day. This colloquial French is what finds its way into the book, with many intentional misspellings that represent to the reader the experience Cummings & Brown would have had as Americans galavanting about Paris with absolutely no knowledge of the language or the customs of the locals. It is this almost childlike approach to experience that Cummings brings to the horror of his French prison ordeal, allowing him to elevate the human spirit, through comedy & through his unique outlook on life, in a way that can only be said of E.E. Cummings.There are many direct allusions to "A Pilgrim's Progress," an old, English morality play (by Bunyan, I believe), as Cummings sees his imprisonment as his own odyssey of a sort. Of course, as is often the way with Cummings, there is also a healthy dose of his philosophy of the individual, of the indomitability of the human spirit, & of his sense of wonder at everything around him. He conveys things through language in a manner that is specific to the poet yet is undoubtedly the hand of a gifted novelist & storyteller. In so many ways, Cummings allows you to feel every second of his experience, at once awe-ful & awesome, a true journey to the depths of hell & back out through his own purgatory to a final salvation as he realizes that even at his lowest, he was always the free-minded individual who refused to be conquered by circumstance. This book stands alone among the many WWI novels. This is a story that is distinctly E.E. Cummings, distinctly the concision of a poet, yet beautifully crafted narrative that allows us to enter into his experience as he brings it to life on the page.I highly recommend "The Cummings Typescript Editions" printing of this book, with forward by George J. Firmage. This edition, of all the editions I have found, is the most true to the author's original intent & contains the manuscript as he himself envisioned it (he actually oversaw a reprinting of the book, I believe in 1935 though it might have been 1928, in which he restored all of the language as he intended it, but I do not believe this version had any of the drawings he had made for the book). The flow of the text, the very helpful glossary of French idioms, & the emotive pencil drawings that illustrate the text make this a truly unique printing of this story. It is certainly worth owning, especially if you're a fan of Cummings already. If you have never read Cummings, this is certainly a good place to start because this was his very first book, a novel, published well before he ever put out a book of poems, though as I've said the poet is certainly present in the way he crafts the narrative to bring to life the imagery that makes up any good story. Of course, given the level & copious amount of French in the book, once you've gone through it using the glossary to understand everything, you really should go back through it at least one additional time just to experience the story all the way through as a continuous work, without stopping to look up the meanings you hopefully have retained from your first read through. This book is well worth the time & effort that several readings require, but I'm not really sure it's fair to call such pleasured reading "effort."

The literary style gets a five star rating from me.I don't know French, but that does not matter, because I am using a Kindle Fire and find that the free VidaLingua French<-->English translator and dictionary I used made it easy to copy and paste French phrases from the book into the French to English translator. Then I copied the English translation and went back to the book, rehighlighted the French phrase, and pressed on Note, so that I could copy the French translation into a note at the end of the French phrase. So I had the reader and translator open at the same time. Of course, I could also use the dictionary component of the app for single words. (To install this particular app, you have to install the Google Play Store on a Kindle Fire. That is very easy to do, and you can find instructions for side loading Google Play by searching for "Kindle Fire" and "Google Play.")The only reason I don't give it a five star rating is that the conditions Cummings describes are like a vacation compared to the Soviet Gulag accounts I have read (particularly Kolyma Tales). I realize it is not a competition, but Cummings' observations about human nature are magnified a thousand fold when reading something like Kolima Tales by Sharov, or, e.g., when reading Kazimierz Moczarski's account of being in a Stalinist prison in Warsaw, and being put in the same cell as Jürgen Stroop, who murdered the last 60,000 inhabitants of the (Jewish) Warsaw Ghetto (more accurately, suppressed the Ghetto Uprising, murdering some of the remaining 60,000 people with his own SS storm troopers who used tanks, machine guns, and flame throwers while fighting about 500 insurgents armed with old pistols and Molotov cocktails), and sending those civilians whom he did not manage to murder with his own special forces to Treblinka to be gassed). Moczarski, as a progressive member of the Polish Home Army, had investigated whether Poles collaborated with the Nazis and whether they had blackmailed Jews in hiding; such people were executed, although that was in Warsaw, whereas one of the four organizations constituting the Home Army, which constituent organization was located in Eastern Poland, murdered Jews in hiding, and murdered Moczarski's immediate superior officer for being Jewish. Ironically, Moczarski trailed Stroop during the Nazi occupation in order to assassinate him, but the opportunity was not available. Moczarski's book was heavily censored in communist Poland, and the English translation titled Conversations With An Executioner (the last word in the title should have been translated as Butcher) was based on the censored Polish version.In any case, other accounts of political imprisonment reveal the much deeper depths of immorality and heights of selflessness that far worse conditions bring out in people. On the other hand, most other accounts do not reveal as much about other prisoners, because their past lives ceased to exist in prisons and labor camps that were far worse than anything Cummings describes. Of course, Cummings was aware of the comparatively lenient conditions he endured, and he did a first rate job describing how "comparatively lenient" imprisonment based on nothing but arbitrary suspicion relies on supervisors who are pigs, underlings who are either cynical or plain stupid, and results in "comparatively hellish" conditions for people whom Cummings reveals as human in the worst and best senses of the term.

e e cummings was best known as an avant-garde poet with an unorthodox way with punctuation, but he was also a writer of prose and an artist. In 1917 he was arrested in Paris, apparently because his friend and companion William Brown had been writing anti-French articles, and was regarded as a potential spy. Cummings was never accused of anything except guilt by association. Cummings and Brown were shifted around for a while, ending up in a place called Macé. Here they stayed for about 3 months in "the enormous room" with about 60-70 other male prisoners (women were held in another part of the building). Eventually Cummings was released.In the early pages I couldn't understand why the author was describing every incident and every person he met in such great detail. But this made more sense when he reached Macé. Most of the narrative from this point on consisted of describing his fellow inmates and guards, and this is where Cummings comes into his own - he has an artist's eye for describing people and shows great empathy with the prisoners. Cummings was himself in a privileged position - he had money which he could draw on to buy cigarettes and supplement the appalling diet, and had a fur coat and bedding whilst most of his companions had no money and nothing but a straw palliasse to lie on.Cummings devises nicknames for his fellow prisoners and the guards - the Zulu, Trick Raincoat, the Fighting Sheeney and other colourful terms. The guards are a pitiful lot, mostly troops who are hors de combat through injury. The women, who the men are not allowed to socialise with (or they have to spend time in the Cabinot - a tiny solitary confinement cell), seem to be either prostitutes or associates (wives etc) of the men.Cummings describes many incidents in great detail ,and it is obvious to the reader that he thinks that the whole system is ludicrous and the French authorities despicable. At the same time he has great admiration for many of his fellow detainees.The end of the book is a bit weak, but the bulk of the narrative - the Enormous Room - makes a telling contribution to the literature of World War I.

this is well written (of course it would be, it's ee cummings) but for my favourite poet i was left a bit disappointed - maybe my expectations were too high. don't know if it was the version i had, but there is a few lines in french and no translations are offered, and although the description in the story is great, especially when it comes to describing characters, i just didn't get so much of a feel for it. it is short but it did seem to drag. i love his poems so much that i feel so guilty leaving three stars... but i think you'd be better reading a collection of his poetry to see the real beauty of his work

Strangely disorganised and pedestrian text by the great Surrealist poet whom I have admired for thirty years.Given the subject matter ( World War One and pacifism ) Cummings could have made much more of it.Too much gratuitous French-language intellectual-speak:Too much Yale preppyness:Cummings had nothing to prove and could have spared us.Sadly, I could not finish the book, and you have a right to know.

An account of his time held in the "enormous room" of the title ..Cummings gives us a rare view of humans surviving in situations that are completely out of their control.The acceptance, the simple kindness, the beauty of the most damaged people .. Cummings describes with a depth of feeling that uplifts. . . gives hope.I almost felt regret when he was moved and I'd not "see" the characters and the room again.

This is a superb allegory of the human condition under authoritarian regimes. Above all, Cummings shows with immense warmth and fellow-feeling the mixture of pettiness, selfishness and acts of decency that is life in captivity, and he holds officialdom and its bullying minions up to withering scorn.