Fear of flying nowadays mainly involves a strong distaste for the crowded planes, fear of drawing a far too overweight passenger as your next seat companion, the comedy of the search routines prior to boarding, including a fear of more than 3 oz. of water, and the reminders over the loudspeakers about the "threat levels" to one's existence. "Il etait une fois..." once upon a time, as Saint Exupery's wonderful, classic book reminds us, there was a fear, but also the thrill of flying, and pioneering new routes for the "mail planes" of the `20's and `30's.
The author mastered the technical skills, but also the art of flying. His book captures the sheer exuberance of flight, and the excitement of a nighttime aerial crossing of the Sahara. Likewise, he relates finding passages through the 21,000 ft Andes with a plane whose "ceiling" is 18,000 ft. Along with his technical skills, and his descriptive powers, he brings the intellect of a philosopher to his writings. Consider his rebuke to the Luddites among us: "Numerous, nevertheless, are the moralists who have attacked the machine as the source of all the ills we bear, who, creating a fictitious dichotomy, have denounced the mechanical civilization as the enemy of the spiritual civilization." (p 43) And for those amongst us who have been thrilled to the austere beauty of the desert, including myself: "I shall never be able to express clearly whence comes this pleasure men take from aridity, but always and everywhere I have seen men attach themselves more stubbornly to barren land than to any other. Men will die for a calcined, leafless, stony mountain. The nomads will defend to the death their great store of sand as if it were a treasure of gold dust. And we, my comrades and I, we too have loved the desert to the point of feeling that it was there we had lived the best years of our lives." (p84) Or later: "...it was here in the desert he possessed his veritable treasures--this prestige of the sand, the night, the silence, this homeland of wind and stars." (p105)
A strong theme in this book is the lost potential in each person, the contrast between what they could have become, and what they have settled for, once the routines have hardened. Consider: "Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning." (p11). He ends the book on this theme, writing of the child Mozarts throughout the world: "This is a life full of beautiful promise." Saint-Exupery realizes he won't make it to his potential, won't soar among the stars: "This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine. This little Mozart will love shoddy music in the stench of night dives. This little Mozart is condemned."
Saint-Exupery is most famous for his children's classic, also of potential and loss, "The Little Prince." This book is a most worthy complement for adults, particularly those who have fought the hardening of their own clay. The author lived as he wrote, perhaps taking one too many chances. His plane crashed in the Mediterranean during WW II, but his mission at the time appeared not to be related to the war, but rather the oldest and most common of peccadilloes, the pleasures of the flesh. The airport in his place of birth, Lyon, is named after him.
Overall, an excellent read, even if you are stuck in the middle seat.
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