#10, A Time of Gifts, and Between the Woods and the Water, by Patrick Leigh Fermor

I found about about these books by reading the author’s obituary in the New York Times on June 11, 2011. He had died at the age of 96. The two books are parts one and two of the author’s account of his journey, mostly on foot, southeastward across the continent of Europe, from Holland to Istanbul, in 1934. He was 19 at the time. The books were published in 1977 and 1986, respectively, so a lot of time elapsed between the walking and the writing. In fact, the two books only cover the first two thirds of the author’s journey, getting him as far as the border between Romania and Bulgaria. (He’s only averaging about two miles a page!) According to the Times, “his biographer Artemis Cooper told the British newspaper The Guardian that Mr. Leigh Fermor had completed a draft [of the third and concluding volume], and that it would be published.”

If I had the opportunity to change lives with another person (or at least to take part in a parlor game with that premise) I would have to give serious consideration to choosing Patrick Leigh Fermor. Besides exploring and getting to know many remote corners in the world, Fermor was also a war hero, who kidnapped a Nazi general on Crete in 1942. This exploit was made into a film, “Ill Met by Moonlight,” directed by Michael Powell and starring Dirk Bogarde. Of course, it is always possible that someone having an interesting and full life is for one reason or another not able to fully enjoy that life, but having read these books, I don’t sense that this was the case with Patrick Leigh Fermor.

When I was 19 and under the spell of Jack Kerouac I found myself with no job and nothing to do during the summer. So I decided to go hitchhiking. Here are two key differences between my excursion and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s: One, walking is a lot more open-ended than hitchhiking. I may have been looking for experience, but most people in cars, as it turns out, are looking to get somewhere, so hitchhiking turns out to be about transportational assist more than adventure. People take you into their cars to keep them awake, to complain, or just to fend off boredom. I covered 33 states and several thousand miles in a little over three weeks before finding myself back in New York City again. It was a bold and probably dangerous journey in its way, but nobody would ever suggest that there was a book to be written about it.

The other key difference is that I lacked Fermor’s gregariousness and his ability to enter into the fabric of peoples’ lives. I met some nice people and had some minor adventures, but it would have been better had I been able to “stick” in a few more places for a few more days. Fermor not only makes friends, he gets invited to stay in a series of sumptuous ancestral manses across Middeleuropa. To quote Jan Morris in the preface to Between the Woods and the Water, “[F]riends had passed him on to friends, a count here had recommended him to a baron there, and by the time we join him he is almost as often being picked up in a limousine, or riding a borrowed thoroughbred, as he is plodding along a highway.”

These differences are closely related—to travel on foot is to be a kind of pilgrim, to qualify for a traditional form of charity. For centuries religious pilgrims had crisscrossed Europe depending on just this kind of charity. It is odd, though, that after hundreds of kilometers—and pages—Fermor has not one rude or hostile encounter to report. My luck as a hitchhiker was not nearly as good.

In Patrick Leigh Fermor’s memoirs, as in Karen Blixen’s, the authors present accounts of their lives that are essentially free of elements like self-doubt, envy, fear, and resentment. Is this because these elements were lacking from their lives? I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s that these authors are writing about the times and places in which they lived, as much as they are writing about their own lives. In writing of this type, it is appropriate to filter out certain psychological frequencies that would otherwise obscure the view of the world outside. As an example of an entirely different kind of autobiographical writing, consider Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which dwells on the author’s suffering and personal development more than on its author’s times and places. Do memoirs and autobiographies generally fall into one of the other category, or is there more of an even distribution across the spectrum? Are more personal accounts becoming more common? These are matters to consider.

On the foundation of his personal experiences, Fermor has built an impressive edifice of erudition. After taking his walk, he spent a half century studying, revisiting, and considering the significance of those times and places. His art is in making the personal experience and the added learning blend so well. We are not often reminded that he is commenting on and looking back at a former self. Somehow, he has invested that former self with the knowledge and perspective of the older man. The books do not feel particularly elegiac or nostalgic.

Fermor’s command of information is evident from the precise and extensive vocabulary he uses to describe his experiences. There is hardly a paragraph in these books that does not contain a word that I did not know. Once in a while I would look one up—for example, incunabula, a word that describes a category of early printed books, or aurochs, a type of wild Eurasian cattle that became extinct in the 17th century. Occasionally, Fermor’s precision goes a bit too far, as when he spends 10 pages describing the architecture of a single building in Prague—lintels, ashlars, cusps, ogees; even if I was familiar with these architectural terms, there is no way I could reassemble the images that Fermor is trying to capture in words. I would gladly visit such structures with such a knowing and enthusiastic guide, but the words alone will not suffice.

I am glad to finally know something about the geography and the history of places like Hungary and Transylvania and Romania: of the procession of peoples over the plains and mountains of southeastern Europe over the past 20 centuries. Of the Dacians who made war against Rome and were ultimately subdued by Trajan’s legions. Of the Turks who pushed up the Danube as far as Vienna before slowly being pushed back to Asia Minor. And of the Tatars of central Asia who were still raiding Hungary as late as the 1780s. Few places on Earth have been as fought over as southeastern Europe.

But Fermor’s books are more than a collection of wikipedia entries. There is warmth and charm in his accounts. I felt a bit sad when I finished the second book, because I liked hanging out with Paddy. I look forward to meeting up with him again.

#9 Middlemarch, George Eliot

Every former English major knows that Middlemarch is one of the great novels in the English language. It’s the Victorian novel to end all Victorian novels. I just searched online for “greatest novels of all time”; the first list I found has Middlemarch in eighth place, between Madame Bovary and The Magic Mountain. If Middlemarch were a baseball player, it would be Ted Williams.

I read Middlemarch in grad school, and I remember that I asked the professor, whose name was Felicia Bonaparte, if I could write my master’s thesis on it. She recommended that I take on Eliot’s next and final novel, Daniel Deronda, instead. I produced a 36-page paper, which seemed at the time almost as epic as the 900-page book it was about. I worked at it most of one summer—1982, perhaps—and I truly enjoyed it. Daniel Deronda spoke to me. I thought I’d produced a masterpiece, and I got an A. If I read it today I’d probably be appalled, but if nothing else I’m sure it was bursting with enthusiasm.

I wonder how clear an idea I had, back in 1982, about what I would have wanted to say about Middlemarch—what it said to me back then.

Middlemarch is about two marriages, both unhappy. All four principals marry an idea of the other person, and all four find afterward that the reality does not match the idea. The psychological insight is wonderful and it all seems very real and nuanced. What little I remembered from my first encounter with Middlemarch had to do with these two marriages.

Middlemarch is also the story of various citizens of a country town. They all struggle and scheme; some come out well and some do not. Invariably, though, everybody seems to get according to their desserts. George Eliot is a just god and moral law is strictly enforced in her universe. I’ve sort of lost my taste for this sort of moral exactitude—it doesn’t tally with the world I live in.

There’s really only one character in Middlemarch who has the ability to surprise us—or her author. Dorothea Brooke is a young woman who marries a dry and dreary scholar, imagining that she will help him illuminate the universe with his wisdom. In the Prelude to Middlemarch, Eliot invokes St. Teresa of Avila:

Teresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and fed, from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction…

Dorothea is a modern-day St. Teresa. You might imagine that such a character would be insufferable, but in fact the scenes with Dorothea are luminous—and sometimes even a bit funny. She’s exalted, but she’s not particularly shrewd. She provides an interesting mirror in which other characters can see themselves. Inherently good characters see their goodness in her and are sustained by that vision. Bad or tedious characters see their deficiences, or see nothing.

But I am just saying the obvious things about this book—these comments are like snapshots of the Eiffel Tower. Proof that I’ve been there—not much more. I don’t seem to have any way to “warm up” Middlemarch. I am not generally attracted to the idea of book clubs, because I’m pretty sure I would find my own opinions more interesting than everybody else’s, and therefore would find myself engaged in an exercise in patience (or, failing that, rudeness). But with Middlemarch, it might be interesting to hear how different people reacted to and assessed the different characters. Each so perfectly framed by circumstances and by other characters. Each facing a moral dilemma or difficult choice. Each bathed in the light irony of the author’s prose, with thoughts and feelings presented in a detached way that provides the necessary clues to each character’s flaws. To talk about Middlemarch is to consider how one might live better.