Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Those who’ve read my blog or who’ve been around me, know of my enthusiasm for the writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor, especially his most famous work, A Time of Gifts. After learning about this author and his work at JLF (Jaipur Literature Festival), I read A Time of Gifts. After our second visit to JLF, where I heard his biographer, Artemis Cooper and her husband, Antony Beevor, both speak about Fermor, I bought the remaining two books of this trilogy for my Kindle.

But I didn’t read them. Why not?

          For some time, if you’d have asked me I would have attributed this to my fickle reading habits—so many books, so little time—I’m like a kid in a candy shop. Plus, one enthusiasm gives way to another with changing circumstances and then I’m off down another path. All of this is true, but I don’t think it quite captures the deeper motive for my procrastination. After all, am I not too old to suffer the comparison to a kid in a candy shop? (Well, not really.) But after further reflection, I’ve come to a different conclusion. I was savoring the anticipation of the next installment, Between the Woods and the Water. I needed the right occasion, as one does for the enjoyment of a fine wine kept for years in the cellar. (Or, as our modest circumstances dictate, a pretty good wine for a couple of months in the cupboard.) I needed the right occasion to partake once again of Fermor’s enchanting—and may I say? —intoxicating prose. And this summer the right occasion arrived.

          The occasion arrived because we were moving t0 Bucharest, Romania. Not long after arriving in Bucharest, we traveled to Budapest, Hungary, returning to Bucharest by train through Transylvania, an itinerary that roughly matched that of Fermor (although he doesn’t visit Bucharest until the third and final volume of his account). The perfect occasion presented itself, and I once again could savor the superb vintage of Fermor’s prose. 

Passport photo of the dashing young vagabond

          For those that don’t know the backstory, young Patrick Leigh Fermor—Paddy to his friends—set off at age 18 to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (as he insisted on calling Istanbul). In 1977 he published the first installment of his account of that adventure, A Time of Gifts, and in 1986 he published this, the second installment, Between the Woods and the Water. (The third and final volume stalled and was published posthumously through the efforts of Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron.) In each volume he recounts his walk, taking his time along his and the reader’s way to elucidate about the countryside, the history, and the people with whom he inevitably makes an easy but lasting bond. Paddy sleeps in elegant Budapest homes, in gypsy camps, and in old Transylvanian estate houses; in other words, with those at the pinnacle of society and those at the bottom. Paddy’s fabled charm and easygoing manner allow him to bond at every level.

The man of memory & imagination

          For us to have just recently visited the grand environs of Budapest and the dark forests and sunny valleys of Transylvania adds a unique—but not necessary—vividness to his tales. With Fermor’s graceful and vivid prose, transports the reader to his remote and enchanted world via the written word. Between the Woods and the Water is not a diary—although he kept diaries and drew upon what he had available to him so many years later—and so we have the perspective of both the young Fermor and the mature, reflective Fermor in these pages. A double treat, a two-for-the-price-of-one.

          Fermor can describe nature scenes as few others can; for instance, watching an eagle preen itself takes the better part of a page. He also details the history and architecture of the regions, cities, villages, and estates that he visits. And not least among his skills are his descriptions of the gypsies, shepherds, aristocrats, bon vivants, and beautiful women that he befriends, and his adventures with them. His powers of observation, imagination, and memory are astonishing. Perhaps his power of invention is most impressive of the three, as one doubt that anyone’s memory could be so fine as his, but no matter—the beauty of his prose patches all into one seamless cloth of beauty that disarms any quibbling about the veracity of memory.

          Except for riding horseback across the Hungarian plain and motoring around Transylvania as a part of a clandestine threesome, Paddy walked the full journey.

          Fermor also delights in language, picking up bits of Hungarian and some Romanian along his way after having earlier mastered some German. (I believe he came pre-loaded with French and Latin. The Latin, by the way, came in handy in a later adventure.) He delights in the local languages as he does the local architecture and history.

          Fermor’s book is a joy to read, even more so given my recent acquaintance with some of the lands he traverses in this installment. He ends Between the Woods and the Water with “to be concluded” similar to the “to be continued” that ended A Time of Gifts, but as you’ll learn, it almost didn’t come to pass.  

Harvest by Jim Crace

Jaipur Literature Festival author Jim Crace’s Harvest fascinated me. The book never specifies its setting of time and place, but we can discern an English village around the time of the enclosure movement. (The enclosure movement in Tudor England divided lands held in common into privately owned plots and brought sheep to replace row crops and other livestock raised on the commons.) “Walter Thirsk” tells the story of what happens in his adopted village during the course of one week during harvest time. Walter is an astute and intelligent observer of village life, his insight enhanced by the fact that he’s an outsider, having come to the village as an adult. He’s known and served the local grandee for many years, but he lives in the village with the local folk. The narrator portrays a sense of a stable equilibrium of life in the village when the book opens, although not without a sense of foreboding. Then strangers appear on the edge of the village, someone sets the grandee’s dovecot on fire, and a new claimant to the land arrives who wants to bring sheep. This cluster of events begins to eat away at the ties that bind the village into a community. 

This book might have been a novel of detection: crimes are committed, but Walther Thirsk is no William of Baskerville (The Name of the Rose). He is an intelligent but plain, common man. Walter’s narrative is that of a keen observer who attempts—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—to untangle mysteries and reduce wrongs, but his efforts have only limited success. Events and intentions are too great for him to manage. He’s forced into the role of observer even as he hopes to shape events as a participant. 

I heard Crace speak a couple of times at JLF, and I recall that during the panel on the “historical novel” he said that Harvest doesn’t merit that that designation. He’s both right and wrong. Right in the sense that he never specifies the time and place nor does he reference any historical figures. But he nevertheless suggests a sense of village life that compels us back into a hazy past. Part of his success in doing so comes from his well-wrought prose, rich yet not pandering. He provides a sense of the sinews of village life and how they might be cut asunder, how a village reacts to loss, blame, and change. It’s quite a treat. I might also say it’s relevant. 

The contemporary world continues to experience accelerated change, especially for smaller, agricultural communities. In many nations, such villages still exist (I think here especially of Ethiopia), but of course also in India. These villagers will experience sudden and dramatic change—economic, cultural, social, and (therefore) political—and change does not occur easily. Many of the problems become visible in the cities. We see slums and crime. We know about the culture of unattached males that roam the streets. In India, we’re especially aware of the culture of rape, the thuggery, and susceptibility to demagoguery that have arisen among these unattached village males transplanted into cities like Delhi. But even Iowa has experienced dramatic changes with economic decline. Although separated by centuries from Crace’s imaginary village, one can appreciate the sense of disorder and loss that must occur. These ongoing events and processes make me think that Crace’s book is more than a journey into the past. It also serves as an appreciation of what still happens in the world around us.

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor

After reading D-Day for several days, I began to feel like Patton, General Leclerc, and their soldiers: I became increasingly eager to reach Paris and thereby liberate myself from this book. Because it was boring or poorly written? Not at all! In fact, Beevor's account of the ferocious battles in Normandy takes the reader into the fray about as well as I expect a book can. The death, destruction, and brutality--with a few fleeting glimpses of kindness--are all there. Just as soldiers wanted to be done with battle and return home and the generals wanted to achieve their glory, so the reader, after only this hint of what it would have been like, wants to conclude the matter. This is a sign of the author's success, not failure. 

I wrote a bit about this book in a recent post, but there's a lot more that can be said about the book. Beevor explains what was happening from Churchill to Norman residents, from the troops to the generals. He does an excellent job of mixing these perspectives. His mix of perspectives also serves to break up the alphabet soup military designations and descriptions of movements on the map. Such descriptions and maps are crucial for understanding the military moves, but such descriptions can sometimes overwhelm a layman like me. 

So in addition to my earlier comments and the comments made above, here are some random notes and thoughts generated by this book: 

• General Montgomery (Monty) was as big a horse's ass as I've heard him to be from other sources. Indeed, many Brits were as displeased with him as the Americans were. He really seems to have taken the cake as a prima dona. 
• General Patton was no slouch when it comes to ego, either. The portrait composed by Beevor, done in small bits, conforms to the impression I have from George C. Scott's biopic, Patton. But in this theatre, Patton, after serving as a decoy, proved helpful. 
• Normandy's sacrifice saved the rest of France a great deal of trauma, but the Normans suffered mightily, perhaps too much from Allied bombing. 
• The politics of the French; to wit, De Gaulle and the Communists, was a real mess. FDR didn't trust DeGaulle, nor should he have, but there was no other choice. The French were proud, although essentially defeated (1940 was a complete collapse of the French) until the Liberation of Paris. It looked like post-war France could erupt in civil war. The Communists, quite important in the Resistance, were putting out pamphlets in Paris to send people "to the barricades" The politics of France at that time remained a mess, and the race to Paris became a necessary ingredient in the campaign. 
• Women in France accused of collaboration horizontale suffered shaved-heads or worse. As Beevor notes, however, much of this consisted of witch-hunting for the benefit males deflecting their non-resistance and enacting their jealousy. Beevor writes: “It was jealousy masquerading as moral outrage. The jealousy was mainly provoked by the food that they [the women] had received as a result of their conduct.” (450). Mob justice is an oxymoron, and there was a lot of it. 
• Americans, arriving in Paris after the grueling battles to take Normandy, treated Paris as a one big carnival, leaving a bad taste in many of the French. Instead of thanks for liberating France, the French remember the gluttony, drunkenness, and whoring. 
• It appears to me (and I don't recall Beevor directly addressing this) that without the almost unchallenged air superiority of the Allies (RAF and Americans), the ground forces may have been outmatched by the Germans. 
• Although not as important in the end, Allied naval superiority allowed the Allies to arrive and establish a beachhead unchallenged from the sea as well as the air. 
• The lack of coordination between ground and air forces often caused a large number of friendly fire casualties. 
• There could be no better demonstration that Clausewitz was right about the reality of the "friction" in war and the reality of “the fog of war”.
• The brutality and carnage on both sides can sometimes leave one shaking one's head. If reading a book doesn't stamp "war is hell" onto your brain, then you'd better check your sense of humanity. This wasn't a "good war"--there is no such thing. 

A Time for Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

In December 1933, a young Brit picked up a freighter to Holland from London to begin a walk across Europe to Constantinople (Istanbul). He'd knocked about in school, never quite fitting into to the routine, although clever and widely read. He held no express goal for this journey except to complete it. After a brief stint traversing Holland, he crossed into Germany and began trekking up the Rhine Valley. After achieving southern Germany, he turned east, picking up the Danube, following the river’s course into Czechoslovakia. He concludes this portion of his journey at a bridge crossing from Czechoslovakia into Hungary. It will take him until January 1935 to reach his goal of Constantinople and a lifetime to complete the three volumes that recount his journey. The final installment, The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos won’t be published in the U.S. until March 2014.

Three traits make this book so impressive. The journey across Europe, poised roughly midway between its two great 20th century cataclysms, puts the reader in a time machine with young “Paddy”. Fermor begins his youthful journey in the year that Hitler came to power, and he encounters Brown Shirts in beer halls and an exuberant thug who’s sloughed off his Communist trappings—physical and mental— to dive headlong into the Nazi movement. As Fermor journeys forward towards his destination, he moves backward in time. He sleeps under the open stars, in barns, in taverns, in hostels, in homes, and in castles. Fermor's youth and charm seem to provide an open sesame to ordinary folk, to the middle class, and to the fading aristocracy. He develops a web of connections among the well-to-do that opens doors as he travels into the next town or castle. He moves from pauper to prince and back with elegant ease. He deftly portrays the characters and scenes that he encounters, often providing digressions on history, flora and fauna, and landscape as he makes his way. A brief side journey to Prague elicits a short foray into the Defenestration of Prague. 

The second factor that adds luster to this work arises from the fact that he wrote this first installment over 40 years after his journey. Invited to write a magazine article about the virtues of walking, Fermor instead wrote this book (published in 1977). Thus, except from some brief excerpts taken directly from his journal, we have the work of a mature, worldly, and erudite man reconstructing his adventures as a very young man. The exuberance of youth mixes with the perspective of age, although the narrative is uninterrupted and of a single voice. We meet two selves speaking through one voice.  

Finally, Fermor's prose exceeds poetry in its beauty and grace. Fermor's work supports my contention that prose can exceed poetry in its beauty, fueled by more extended metaphors, descriptions, and narratives—if penned by the hand of a master such as Fermor. Poetry mimics music in its fleeting melody and open suggestions. Prose, like painting, is more plastic and invites detailed consideration, revealing nuances of meaning as the text retards time of allow a deeper contemplation of the scene created. Others, like William Dalrymple, praise Fermor as one ofthe great English prose-stylists. I concur. Fermor paints verbal portraits and landscapes that rival a Turner or Constable in beauty. 

My brief review does not indicate a lack of merit or enthusiasm for this book; quite the opposite, my ability is inadequate to do real justice to this gem. I’ll leave you with a quote from a passage of the book to provide you a better representation of what Fermor accomplishes with his prose. The setting is at the end of the book, as Fermor stands on the bridge over the Danube between Czechoslovakia and Hungary on Holy Saturday evening: 

I too heard the change in the bells and the croaking and the solitary owl’s note. But it was getting too dim to descry a figure, let alone a struck match, at the windows of the Archbishopric. A little earlier, sunset had kindled them as if the Palace were on fire. Now the sulphur, the crocus, the bright pink and the crimson had left the panes and drained away from the touzled but still unmoving cirrus they had reflected. But the river, paler still by contrast with the sombre merging of the woods , had lightened to a milky hue . A jade-green radiance had not yet abandoned the sky. The air itself, the branches, the flag-leaves, the willow -herb and the rushes were held for a space, before the unifying shadows should dissolve them, in a vernal and marvellous light like the bloom on a greengage. Low on the flood and almost immaterialized by this luminous moment, a heron sculled upstream, detectable mainly by sound and by the darker and slowly dissolving rings that the tips of its flight-feathers left on the water. A collusion of shadows had begun and soon only the lighter colour of the river would survive. Downstream in the dark, meanwhile, there was no hint of the full moon that would transform the scene later on. No-one else was left on the bridge and the few on the quay were all hastening the same way. Prised loose from the balustrade at last by a more compelling note from the belfries, I hastened to follow. I didn’t want to be late.

TO BE CONTINUED

Fermor, Patrick Leigh (2010-10-10). A Time of Gifts (Kindle Locations 4710-4721). John Murray. Kindle Edition.

And continue I shall with Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates, the next installment. As a little added bonus, I’m very much looking forward to hearing his biographer, Artemis Cooper, speak @ #JLF about her Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure published in 2013.

And Now, for the Rest of the Story . . . A Review of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The late radio newscaster and commentator, Paul Harvey, did a bit for while called “The Rest of Story”.  He’d would start of a tale of adversity, come to an opportune moment, and break for a commercial pitch (usually, a cleaner called Bon Ami--emphasis on the first syllable). He’d then return with an announcement (and a voice he could have trademarked), “And now, for the rest of the story!”, wherein he reveals the protagonist’s triumph over the adversity earlier described. Malcolm Gladwell has done something similar in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success. However, unlike Harvey’s tales, it isn’t simply a matter of the hero’s pluck and perseverance, but also of plain ol’ good luck. 

Not that Gladwell diminishes the value of hard work; indeed, it’s the sine quo non of success (see, for example, his discussion of the 10,000-hour rule). Nor does he ignore “talent”, that God-given set of personal characteristics that we receive via our particular gene pool. It’s just that talent along doesn’t tell us much about what distinguishes the pretty good from the exceptional. What distinguishes the exceptional is luck (or in terms from Machiavelli’s melodious Italian, Fortuna). Luck can take the form of extraordinary early access to computers (Bill Gates & Bill Joy); year of birth (highly successful Jewish lawyers in NYC in the 1970s and 1980s), or the color (or even tone) of your skin. This outlook is the anti-Bush, anti-Romney tale. For instance, Jeb Bush speaks of how he overcame obstacles to achieve business success, while Romney touts himself (or did, who cares now?) as a self-made man. Not that either man didn’t work hard, I’m sure that they did, but each received benefits from family and upbringing and wealth that very few Americans could match. They are among the fortunate few, although they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge it (although, except that we may suffer the plague of Jeb, who cares a whit about Mitt Romney anymore?). (Hypothesis: what separates wealthy Dems (e.g., a Ted Kennedy) from Republicans, like a Bush or Romney, is an appreciation of at least ancestors having come up through the ranks and that good fortune has made the difference in their life’s course.) 

Like Gladwell’s other books, he relies on strong academic sources mixed with well-written and structured narratives. Indeed, Gladwell tells one narrative and then alters it with a “and now for the rest of the story” addendum. This way of approaching this topic makes for fun and compelling reading. Gladwell relates how rice paddy agriculture and the Chinese language for numbers can help account for extraordinary mathematical success by students from these Asian cultures and how culture brought from the Scottish highlands by Scotch-Irish settlors in the U.S. South can account for greater violence there, and so on. 

One thing I took away especially is the importance of school: of teachers and resources. Indeed, the whole book screams at us to provide opportunities for persons to realize their potentials in whatever their fields of endeavor or interest. Something as arbitrary as birthdays greatly influence ultimate success in many athletic fields simply because, when size provides an advantage, the older kids enjoy an edge that gets translated into more opportunities for play, which translates into more hours of practice, and . . . well, you get the picture. Scarily, Gladwell suggests that if Canadians changed their hockey league qualifications from yearly breaks to six-month breaks, they’d double the number of first-rate hockey players that they produce. If we as a society should learn anything from this, it’s that opportunity—the ability learn and grow—should serve as one of the highest social values. Sadly, I don’t think that we’re doing this.

A fun and easy read; instructive and ultimately inspiring, I recommend this book. 

Malcolm Gladwell is scheduled to participate in #JLF in 2014.