As the 20th Century flies away from us

In Michelangelo Antonioni’s film “The Passenger” there is a wonderful cinematographic moment as Maria Schneider and Jack Nicholson are driving through a forest in a convertible car.  She turns around in the passenger’s seat and then we simply watch the forest receding into the distance.  It’s a view  few, save perhaps unruly children have.  In the context of the film it is linked metaphorically to a  recession of experience, memory and identity.

We’re 14 years into the 21^st century and the 20^th is now receding away from us like that forest in Antonioni’s film.  The daunting task of how to understand, appreciate and learn from it remain, as it always will, but, because of its proximity, the imperative to do so is perhaps as strong now as it ever will be.

Fiction can be a particularly powerful instrument for such endeavors.  For example, anyone trying to understand European history of the early nineteenth century is supremely lucky:  there is Tolstoy and War and Peace.  Sure, it’s work, particularly for the casual reader in translation, but the immense rewards are so disproportionate.  It remains prima facie evidence of the towering value of reading “difficult” books, a pursuit perhaps less appreciated than it once was, and not unfairly.  The last part of the 20^th century particularly suffered from innumerable works of questionable value which were contrived to be difficult but offered little in return.

A few books, many neglected, stand out for me as supremely useful for glimpsing the 20^th century as it was lived.  Some are difficult, some are easy, many are rarely read.  Some I encountered as a child in my grandmother’s small library.  Others I’ve encountered quite recently.  Nearly all are memoirs.

The first is Seven Pillars of Wisdom.  The book remains as controversial now as when it first appeared.  As of late it seems particularly popular to denigrate it on the grounds of historical accuracy or for T. E. Lawrence’s presumed heroic self-portrayal.  I’ve even seen it categorized as fiction.  It is not.  It is clearly and unambiguously a memoir and Lawrence is nothing if not self-effacing and often very funny.  It is a difficult book.   It necessarily portrays a vast set of characters and it takes place in a rich and exotic geography entirely foreign to most English readers.  But it is the memoir of an intense, intelligent, supremely perceptive man at a place and time supremely important to subsequent history and current world events.  As proof, consider these two very different examples.  In chapter 2, Lawrence surveys the history of the Arabian Peninsula and forecasts its likely future history.  He was writing in the early 1920s yet he accurately, and sadly, predicts what did happen in the next seventy years.  In contrast of scale and immediacy, here is Lawrence writing of the experience of riding a camel in the desert,

“I seemed at last approaching the insensibility which had always been beyond my reach: but a delectable land: for one born so slug-tissued that nothing this side fainting would let his spirit free. Now I found myself dividing into parts. There was one which went on riding wisely, sparing or helping every pace of the wearied camel. Another hovering above and to the right bent down curiously, and asked what the flesh was doing. The flesh gave no answer, for, indeed, it was conscious only of a ruling impulse to keep on and on; but a third garrulous one talked and wondered, critical of the body's self-inflicted labour, and contemptuous of the reason for effort.”

At once the physical experience is visceral, metaphysical and psychological.  At so many levels you are along for the ride.

Here is another.  Wind, Sand and Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  He is known, of course, for “The Little Prince,” but the former is by far the much more important work in this context.  Human piloted aviation remains one of the signal and romantic achievements of the 20^th century, so much so that even now, in the face of contrary evidence, space flight is portrayed as being like the dogfights of World War II fighter pilots.  “Wind, Sand and Stars,” like “Seven Pillars” captures not only the visceral exhilaration of flight, but the psychology and philosophical aspirations it created in those  few, brave adventurers.  One reads “Wind, Sand, and Stars” to experience not only the feeling and vision of pilots surmounting the Andes or flying across the sands of North Africa at night in fragile single engine airplanes but their psychology, and optimistic humanism as well.  There was a time when reading St. Ex. Was as much a part of learning to fly as learning the radio alphabet.

A very easy, and popular, read is Hemingway’s A moveable Feast, his loving memoir of life in Paris in the 1930s.  Woody Allen’s enjoyable film “Midnight in Paris,” can be seen as a paean to Hemingway’s memoir which is simply more fun if only because you’re in 1930’s Paris for the duration.  Here’s a treat:  order a café au lait at the Café Les Deux Magots or at the Café de Flore on Blvd. Saint-Germain on a weekday April Morning and read a couple of chapters.  You may find you’ll never forget the day, the weather, the people, or your particular thoughts that morning.

Two memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon, the World War I poet, are unfairly neglected and probably rarely read.  Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer are a discordant pair that suggest questions that are disturbingly pertinent to the beginning of the 21^st century.  The first gently eases you into the cares and interests of Edwardian country life; the second matter-of-factly places you in the overwhelming horror of infinite trench warfare.

One unifying aspect of all the books I’ve mentioned is the role of the writer and narrator.  In each, the author not only aspires to literary excellence, he also is an active participant in the events he narrates. He seeks to shape those events and consequent adventures, and feels a moral or aesthetic imperative to do so.  It is a rare gift of insight from a difficult, often seemingly incomprehensible century.  The words of Dylan Thomas come to mind:

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.