If you want a book that will make you think, then there is nothing that I can recommend more than Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. This book will leave an impression on you that will never fade. I can guarantee you that a more emotionally intense book has never been written, and may never be written. A bold claim, perhaps, but I tell you that it is true. It is an obscure classic, but it towers above Tolstoy, Hugo, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Cervantes, Shakespeare, all of those well-known writers. It surpasses them by far. No Greek tragedy, no Crime and Punishment, no Hunchback of Notre Dame, no Macbeth and no Romeo and Juliet, can compare with this book in emotional intensity.
Please, I ask all of you to remember this book and if you ever have a chance to read it, read it. You will not be disappointed, and you will agree with everything that I have said up to now. I can promise that. Thinking back now to reading that book, I still feel echoes of sadness, distinct reverberations of its profound message. This is a book that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Unlike the other "tragedies" you will not be able to casually talk about this book over supper, for mere thought of it will make you feel sorrowful. You will perhaps as I did reread certain passages, absorbing the emotional intensity as far as you are able. I know that after I read this book I held onto it for over a week, rereading countless times certain paragraphs that touch me even now when I think of them.
Some of you will think that what I say is foolish, but you have not read this book. It is with immense confidence that I guarantee you will be affected by this novel. It is poignant beyond compare.
My advice to you is that if you read this book, do so in a private place. There will be times when you will want to cry, and the presence of other people will prohibit you from enjoying the full effects of the emotional intensity of this book. I know that there were moments while reading it that I was overwhelmed with sadness, but being in a public place I had to restrain myself. I regret that.
Laugh at my confidence if you will, but please read the book. The man who wrote this book is not praised enough for his contribution to our reservoir of literature. While Dickens and Tolstoy are praised endlessly, Johnny Got His Gun has been almost forgotten. Very few people have read this book, when compared to the people who have read Tolstoy, Dickens, and Hugo. But I do not doubt that those few who have read it as I have read it were touched by it as I was touched by it and remember it as I remember it.
