Night Flight
by Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry, Stuart Gilbert
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Book Summary Information
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry, Stuart GilbertEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1974-03-20
ISBN: 0156656051
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: Mariner Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780156656054
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Night Flight
Book Review: A Poem in Prose
Summary: 4 Stars
Antoine de St. Exupery is a very difficult author to classify. The closest I can come to boxing him off in words is to say he was a literary expression of the early-mid-20th century French soul, in much the same way George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, and Ernst J?nger were literary expressions of English, American and German souls. Certainly he tried to very hard to blend conventional storytelling with philosophy, and prose-writing with poetry; in other words, to attack the novel from a different direction than had been previously attempted. There is nothing typical in his writings, they are so stylistic as to be almost unique, but even in his uniqueness there are vague similarities of approach.
Like J?nger, "Saint X." wrote in a metaphysical vein, always looking for the deeper meanings behind thought, action and existence itself; and like J?nger, Hemingway and Orwell, he tapped deeply personal and often dangerous experiences, specifically his career as a pilot, to produce his best work.
NIGHT FLIGHT is an example of just such a work. The story itself is based on St. X's experiences in the 20s, flying air mail via South America; a thankless, exhausting and frequently dangerous job, akin to the 19th century Pony Express except one used airplanes instead of horses. This was a time when aviation was still in its infancy, and flying after dark took on an element of risk not altogether different than going into battle. Mechanical failure, physical weariness, freak weather conditions and a host of other factors made every flight a roll of the dice, and to deal with the strain a very special sort of man was required, one who was willing to push himself to the limit and risk his life, not for medals or glory or fame, but simply for the sacks of mail in the bays of his airplane. Simply for pride and the love of flying, the love of getting the job done.
NIGHT FLIGHT is the story of two such men. In the opening chapter, Fabien, the flyer, makes a fateful decision to press on with his mission rather than laying over for the night despite his fatigue and rumors of storms over the horizon. The reason for this soon becomes clear as the story shifts to Rivier?, his boss and the man charged with ensuring the mails are delivered on time. Rivier?, "a man strong enough not to shrink from being unjust", drives himself and others without mercy, using such axioms as "if you punish the men enough, the weather will improve!" to keep the system running smoothly. But Fabien is caught in the storm, and the in-and-out communications with his endangered plane send Rivier? into an agony of soul-searching. As Fabien meditates on the odd contrast between the beauty of the storm and its destructive power, and struggles to escape its wrath, Rivier? struggles with the realization that his shrewd and cold-blooded methods, while effective, have not only isolated him from human contact, but exhausted him physically and spiritually, and left him a used-up unloved old man with nothing to look forward to but a lonely retirement. And yet that is not the end of it, for Fabien is no more motivated by fear of his boss than Rivier? is by exercising power. Instead, as Andr? Gide says in his introduction to the 1932 edition of this book, what both men share is the understanding that "happiness lies not in freedom but in man's acceptance of his duty"; duty demands sacrifice; and sometimes the sacrifice is ultimate.
Despite its brevity - the work is really just a novella, even an extended short-story - it is not, at least by American standards, an "easy read." Like all hyperstylized writers, from Nelson Algren to Elmore Leonard, Saint X's style has a tendency to exhaust the reader, if only because of its unusual rhythms and poetical construction. And yet this exhaustion is a small price to pay for the sense of immediacy, of tragedy and nobility and insight into the human condition, that Exupery affords us. If NIGHT FLIGHT is "literary", and sometimes reads like a 200-page poem, it's still a helluva poem, one that not only offers wisdom but leaves us with passages like this:
"They think, these peasants, that their lamp shines only for that little table; but, from fifty miles away, someone has felt the summons of their light, as though it were a desperate signal from some lonely island, flashed by shipwrecked men toward the sea."
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