A Book that Sees from the Heart

 I have been busy reading serious political indictments this past year, like Bob Woodward's "Rage" which documents and chronicles the horrors of the Trump era and of the man himself.  But I think I have had more than enough of that genre. I don't need any more proof that we are living in urgent times and I think the scorecard clearly indicates the tally of shame and moral culpability. 

A few minutes ago, I just finished a book from a different universe: "The Little Prince," by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  Again. For about the third time in my life. My fourth grade teacher read us The Little Prince, but I don't think it is a children's book at all. When she read it to us, it seemed a rather strange tale to me, the philosophical content totally eluded me and my classmates, and the little nine-year-old I was, found the ending disturbing and sad and generally it did not become a fond childhood literary memory like Winnie the Pooh or most anything by Dr. Seuss.  

When I was in college I read Saint-Exupery's under-appreciated and forgotten "Wind, Sand, and Stars" which is one of my favorite books--a profoundly philosophical reflection on Saint-Exupery's daring adventures as a pilot in the early days of aviation. Reading that book led me back to "The Little Prince" a second time. My almost-adult eyes were opened to a magical reflection on life that had escaped my understanding as a child. 

A student of mine several years ago quoted the book to me and that motivated me to find a copy and make another read back then.  And now this week, I felt compelled to purchase an online version from Apple Books to read it once again. I suspect I read The Little Prince when I am feeling jaded and when I am contemplating the meaning of the world and our place in it.  Though it pretends to be a children's tale it really is a fable for the world-weary.  The narrator encounters the other-worldly Little Prince after he has crashed his plane in the desert and is stranded, no rescuer in sight.  The reader soon discovers that Saint-Exupery's slim volume is a story that speaks to those of us who are surveying the metaphorical wreckage that seems to be the human condition today.

No story can be adequately summed up in one sentence, but there is a passage in The Little Prince that is iconic and captures the essence of the book.  "It is only with the heart one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."  

Seeing with the heart. It is perhaps the greatest challenge we humans face. Too often our hearts are blind as we stagger forward in this tragic world. My reading adventure this week was a wonderful and poignant reminder to keep my heart open as I traverse this little planet.

And it sure beats the hell out of reading one more word about the political mayhem that's draining our souls.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Erik's Book Club: November Selections

Image
I experienced another wonderful month of reading, six books in all.  Five of them were quite magnificent. The Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was probably my favorite.  It's a novel that was a finalist for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. It's a philosophical novel of family, religious faith, identity, and science and one women's struggle to understand them all as they apply to her tragic life. It would take a 1000-word review to do the book justice;  I would simply say that I highly recommend it and it's a book worth seeking out. Very different, but as good as Gyasi's novel is: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize. It sounds peculiar: it's a hybrid history/novel retelling the story of crucial discoveries in quantum physics. It's a book that disorients the reader in that, for the first half, it is extremely difficult to determine where fact ends and fiction begins. Ultimately it is a caution
Read more

Erik's Book Club: September Selections

Image
I was bogged down in August, but I've roared back in September, reading five books during the month.  Even better is the fact that all five books were fantastic and worth reading. First one I read is a book a dear friend recommended quite some time ago and I found an old copy that I brought with me to Indonesia.  Finally, I read it: Blink, by the prolific Malcolm Gladwell. Though it's one of his older works, it still resonates today. In a nutshell, Gladwell utilizes lessons from psychology and neuroscience to teach us how to make better decisions using our ability to focus extremely quickly on a few essential details. Highly recommended, though it was sad to read the chapter on the Amadou Diallo case.  15 years ago Gladwell provided a blueprint on how police could be better trained so they could avoid cases of accidental police killings of minorities, such as in the Diallo case, by training police to recognize bias and modify their policing. Of course, in the thoroughly unprogr
Read more

Erik's Book Club: August Selections

Image
Didn't get much reading accomplished in August. Partly because it was my busy season of New Student Orientation and the start of the academic year, but also because I got bogged down with the main book I read. The book that bogged me down was The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Earlier this year, I read his newest work, Klara and the Sun, which I zipped through and enjoyed immensely.  However, The Buried Giant, while it is a well-written and profound work, really was a book that didn't speak to me and I had trouble getting through more than about 15 pages a day.  The novel is a fable telling the tale of an elderly couple trying to find their long-lost son as they hike alone through the stark English landscape.  The story is set in the darkness of Post-Arthurian England and mixes realism with the exploits of dragons and knights. If you like Ishiguro, you might enjoy this book, but I found it tedious and I would strongly recommend reading Klara and the Sun instead. I also read a
Read more