Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Stuart Gilbert Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.64 You Save: $6.36 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.00 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Night Flight
Book Review: The nature of duty
Summary: 4 Stars
Sitting in the co-pilot's seat of a King Aire over western New Mexico a few years ago, I was eager to see the 11,301 foot high Mt. Taylor where a TWA flight had crashed in the 1930's, killing everyone on board.It's hard to understand how anyone can run into a lone mountain rising a mile above the otherwise flat Colorado Plateau. Surely one could go around, or over, or do anything but hit it. Yet, "flying blind" was a deadly hazard of early aviation.
This book is really about the decisions of men who send others to face danger. It doesn't have a happy ending. One pilot, his radio operator, and plane simply vanish. Others are on schedule, and the system operates without pause. It's a reflection on the nature of imposed duty, a contrast to today's voluntary acceptance of risk.
Saint Exupery wrote a few years after Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic. Aviation progress then rested very much on the courage of pilots, which is why Lindbergh was such a hero. He typified the American spirit, "the lone eagle" accepting great personal risk to be first. `Night Flight' is the opposite side of the coin, it deals with the willingness of men to order others to endure great risk for a new venture.
Weather's bad? In Saint Exupery's words, "if you only punish men enough, the weather will improve." Pilot's afraid? For the supervisor, "a man was a mere lump of wax to be kneaded into shape." Everyone is trapped within an impersonal system that leaves the supervisor without one confidant, and pilots facing instant death in the pitch black tumbling winds of a storm.
In the 1930's, aviation was the cutting edge of high tech. Today, it's electronics. Sure, in our dot com society, people risk their health, sanity, careers and families to the relentless demands of the system. However, risk takers are now volunteers. If they win, they share mightily in the profits. If they lose, with their career scattered like little bits of broken aircraft metal across a harsh landscape, they're invited to try again "because of what you've learned from your last failure."
Progress always involves risk. Saint Exupery examines the need to risk others for the benefit of society. He treats it with sympathy, understanding, compassion and a view that is touching and yet as impersonal and relentless as a storm. It's "fate," as people have said for thousands of years.
Over New Mexico, the King Aire automatic pilot clicked off the tenths of a mile, accurate to within a few feet because of Global Positioning Satellites. Radar scanned the sky for any hazard; on the proper setting, it even shows rain in nearby clouds. Finally I asked, "Where's Mount Taylor?"
"Down there," the pilot answered. It was 10,000 feet, about two miles below. It's hard to comprehend an airliner of the 1930's flying blindly into a mountain, when positions are now known to within a few feet. Saint Exupery paints a brilliant portrait of that earlier era, framed in a discussion of the duties of bosses who order employees to do extraordinary work.
It's not a management book, nor a call for workers' rights; it's a fundamental discussion of the oldest problem in human relations -- How do I order someone to take risk? Today, much risk is voluntary. Societies with people ready, willing, capable and the guts to accept risk become economic leaders. It's why Amazon dot com exists; launched by a man with the guts to risk the money -- no longer the lives -- of others to create an entirely new way of doing business.
`Night Flight' is based on a simple premise, "No guts, no glory." The nature of risk has changed, but it's as applicable now as in 1932 when this book was first published. Anyone who thinks about the duty of management will find this book interesting.
Book Review: Wonderful Chronicle of the Human Condition.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read Exupery's "The Little Prince." I am aware of his tragic 1944 death, just two years after writing this marvelous little book, while flying a solo reconoissance mission in support of the Allies, somewhere over the Mediterranean sea. The world lost a great literary and artistic talent, as well as a hero.
This is important context, because "Night Flight" serves to enhance St. Exupery's reputation, in my opinion, as one of the 20th century's great writers of the human condition. He covers several topics in this short book that are central to understanding the human experience:
- being alone in the dark.
- being alone and lost.
- being "alone" in a villiage, or alone even while surrounded by people, or when trying to talk to your husband or wife.
- the yoke of obligation and duty
- the benefit and sacrifices of the one vs. the many
- disfunctional leadership and command
- living every day with fear and doubts
I cannot judge the impact of the transation out of the French, vs. the peculiarities of St. Exupery's writing style. But whatever it is, it works. The economy of the text reminds me of Hemingway.
He explained it as only a gifted artist could explain it, who had been there many times before. I found myself in the plane with Fabien. I could feel the engine shake, the wind blow by, the dim lights of the instrument panel. I could see the star lights in the sky above, and, as St. Exupery explained it, the star lights in the villiages below. I could feel the onset of awareness and resignation, as the pilot gradually becomes aware that he is hopelessly lost above the vast emptyness of the jungle, mountains and the sea.