Charles Yale Harrison (16 June 1898 - 1954) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-
CanadianCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
and
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
, best known for his
1930The year 1930 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 6 - The first literary character licensing agreement is signed by A. A. Milne, granting Stephen Slesinger U.S...
anti-warThe term anti-war usually refers to the opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many activists...
novella
Generals Die in BedGenerals Die in Bed is an anti-war novella by the Canadian-American writer Charles Yale Harrison. Based on the author's own experiences in combat, it tells the story of a young soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I...
.
Born in Philadelphia to Jewish parents, Harrison grew up in
MontrealMontreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally called Ville-Marie , the city takes its present name from Mont-Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the...
, where at age fifteen he wrote his first short story and at age sixteen took an entry-level job with the
Montreal StarThe Montreal Star was an English-language Canadian newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It folded in 1979 following an eight-month pressmen's strike....
newspaper. Harrison's journalistic career was pre-empted, however, when he enlisted with the 244th Overseas Battalion of the
Canadian Expeditionary ForceThe Canadian Expeditionary Force was the designation of the field force created by Canada for service overseas in the First World War. Units of the C.E.F. were further divided into field formation in France, where they were largely organized into divisions and eventually a Canadian Corps within...
in 1917 to fight in
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
.
Charles Yale Harrison (16 June 1898 - 1954) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-
CanadianCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
and
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
, best known for his
1930The year 1930 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 6 - The first literary character licensing agreement is signed by A. A. Milne, granting Stephen Slesinger U.S...
anti-warThe term anti-war usually refers to the opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many activists...
novella
Generals Die in BedGenerals Die in Bed is an anti-war novella by the Canadian-American writer Charles Yale Harrison. Based on the author's own experiences in combat, it tells the story of a young soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I...
.
Early life
Born in Philadelphia to Jewish parents, Harrison grew up in
MontrealMontreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally called Ville-Marie , the city takes its present name from Mont-Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the...
, where at age fifteen he wrote his first short story and at age sixteen took an entry-level job with the
Montreal StarThe Montreal Star was an English-language Canadian newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It folded in 1979 following an eight-month pressmen's strike....
newspaper. Harrison's journalistic career was pre-empted, however, when he enlisted with the 244th Overseas Battalion of the
Canadian Expeditionary ForceThe Canadian Expeditionary Force was the designation of the field force created by Canada for service overseas in the First World War. Units of the C.E.F. were further divided into field formation in France, where they were largely organized into divisions and eventually a Canadian Corps within...
in 1917 to fight in
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
. After several months in a reserve battalion in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Harrison transferred to the Royal Montreal Regiment and was sent to the
Western FrontWestern Front was a term used during the First and Second World Wars to describe the "contested armed frontier" between lands controlled by Germany to the East and the Allies to the West...
.
The climax of Harrison's war experience came on 8 August 1918 when he participated in the first day of the Battle of Amiens. Harrison was wounded in the foot and spent the rest of the war recuperating, before returning to Montreal. During the 1920s, Harrison managed a movie theatre before moving to
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
to pursue a career as a novelist, journalist, and public relations consultant. By 1928,
serializedThe term "serial" refers to the intrinsic property of a series – namely, its order. In literature, the term is used as a noun to refer to a format by which a story is told in contiguous installments in sequential issues of a single periodical publication.More generally, "serial" is applied...
portions of
Generals Die in Bed began to appear in several American and
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
periodicals. The same year, Harrison made headlines in the
New York Times when he was arrested en route to
NicaraguaNicaragua officially the Republic of Nicaragua , is a representative democratic republic. It is the largest country in Central America with an area of 130,373 km
2. The country is bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west of...
, where he planned to interview the Nicaraguan dissident
General Augusto César SandinoAugusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino was a Nicaraguan revolutionary and leader of a rebellion against the U.S. military presence in Nicaragua between 1927 and 1933. He was labeled as a bandit by the U.S. government, and his exploits made him a hero throughout much of Latin America, where he became a...
.
Literary career
In 1930, after such
anti-warThe term anti-war usually refers to the opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many activists...
books as
Robert GravesGraves considered himself a poet first and foremost. His poems, together with his translations and innovative interpretations of the Greek Myths, his memoir of the First World war, Good-bye to All That, and his historical study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, have never been out of...
's
Goodbye to All ThatGood-bye to All That is the autobiography of Robert Graves. First published in 1929, the work is a landmark anti-war memoir of life in the trenches during World War I. The title expresses Graves' disillusionment in the existence of traditional, stable values in European and English society...
,
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American writer and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's
A Farewell to ArmsA Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1929. The novel is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I...
, and
Erich Maria RemarqueErich Maria Remarque was a German author, most famous today for his anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life:...
's
All Quiet on the Western FrontAll Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental duress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.The...
(all published in
1929The year 1929 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Candide by Voltaire is declared obscene by the United States Customs and seized in 1930....
) became bestsellers, publishers took an interest in
Generals Die in Bed, many elements of which resembled the other books. Harrison, who was working as a copy editor on the
Bronx Home News was propelled into the spotlight when
Generals Die in Bed became an international
bestsellerA bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
, in part due to the controversy surrounding its depiction of Canadian soldiers
lootingLooting , to rob, sacking, plundering, despoiling, or pillaging is the indiscriminate taking of goods by force as part of a military or political victory, or during a catastrophe or riot, such as during war, natural disaster, or rioting...
the
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
town of
ArrasArras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
and shooting unarmed German soldiers.
Although he went on to publish several more novels, none of them matched the commercial success of
Generals Die in Bed. More successful were his
non-fictionNonfiction is an account or representation of a subject which is presented as fact. This presentation may be accurate or not; that is, it can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question. However, it is generally assumed that the authors of such accounts believe them to be...
writings, including a 1931
biographyA biography is a description or account of someone's life and the times, which is usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography is a biography of a person's life written or told by that same person...
of
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
lawyer
Clarence DarrowClarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks and defending John T...
and a 1949 memoir entitled
Thank God For My Heart Attack, an early installment in the genre of self help books.
Harrison married three times; he was widowed in 1931, later remarried and divorced his second wife, and was survived by his third wife at his death. Harrison's niece,
Judith RossnerJudith Perelman Rossner was an American novelist, best known for her 1975 novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which was inspired by the murder of Roseann Quinn and examined the underside of the seventies sexual liberation movement. Though Looking for Mr. Goodbar remained Rossner's best known and best...
, became a successful novelist in the 1960s and '70s, thanks in part to his encouragement of her early work.
Harrison's last novel,
Nobody's Fool, was published in 1948. Suffering from the
heart conditionHeart conditions can be either acute or chronic, and either congenital or acquired.Heart Condition is a 1990 drama, comedy, action film with Denzel Washington and Bob Hoskins.See:* Heart failure* Myocardial infarction...
that inspired his self-help memoir, he died in 1954.
Fiction
- Generals Die in Bed
Generals Die in Bed is an anti-war novella by the Canadian-American writer Charles Yale Harrison. Based on the author's own experiences in combat, it tells the story of a young soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I...
(1930)
- A Child is Born (1931)
- There Are Victories (1933)
- Meet Me on the Barricades (1937)
- Nobody's Fool (1948)
Non-Fiction
- Next Please: The Story of Greco and Carillo (political pamphlet, 1927)
- Clarence Darrow (biography, 1931)
- Public Housing (series of pamphlets, 1937)
- Labor Lawyer (ghostwritten autobiography of Louis Waldman, 1944)
- Thank God For My Heart Attack (self-help, 1949)