A European Education, Romain Gary's first novel and a MOTEV favorite, sits reproachfully on our to read shelf and every now and then we're struck by the fact that we haven't yet read it. Writing to his American publisher regarding the reworked version for the US market, he noted:
"I am sill trying to illustrate my belief more clearly: in everything that is truly human in him, man is his own creation. He invents himself as a myth of greatness, of dignity, of freedom and justice - and civilization is the process by which we endeavor to live up to our own mythology."
We were reminded of our failure to read the book this week when we learned that Gary, who won the Prix Goncourt and was published in Playboy, has been honored with a statue in Vilnius, where he is believed to have been born.
The bronze monument was unveiled on the street where Gary lived as a child, Asta Dirmaite, general secretary of Lithuania’s national UNESCO commission, told AFP.
Sculpted by Lithuanian artist Romas Kvintas, it depicts a boy clasping a galosh, in a nod Gary’s 1960 work "La promesse de l’aube" (Promise at Dawn).
Gary - a pseudonym for Roman Kacew - was also a film director and World War II pilot, although some aspects of his biography appear to have been invented. In addition to his Books and Writers page, there's an official Romain Gary site here.
MOTEV, if you're reading this - and we know you are - it's on our summer reading list. Finally. We promise. Until then, here's an excerpt from Time Magazine's original 1960 review:
A European Education conveys its horror and its message with stubborn authority. Author Gary (for the past four years French consul general in Los Angeles) is a French citizen born of Russian actor parents. As a boy he went to school for a year or two in Poland, speaks its language and understands its plight. His hero is a boy of 14 who is led into a forest by his doctor father and left with a supply of potatoes in a dugout. His mother has been taken to one of the brothels set up by the Germans, and it is a long time before Janek knows that his father was killed when, alone, he attacked her keepers.
Gary's La Vie devant soi, which was assigned to me during an undergraduate semester in Paris, remains one of my all-time favorite novels. (It's also what led me to A European Education.) Thank you so much for this post.
Posted by: Erika D. | June 25, 2007 at 03:45 PM
TEV
Don't forget the words Gary had with Thomas Pynchon back in the 60s when he accused the reclusive one of plagiarism. Here is T P's reply:
The New York Times Book Review
17 July 1966, pp. 24, 26
To the Editor:
In a recent letter to the editor, Romain Gary asserts that I took the name "Genghis Cohen" from a novel of his to use in a novel of mine, The Crying of Lot 49. Mr. Gary is totally in error. I took the name Genghis Cohen from the name of Genghis Khan (1162-1227), the well-known Mongol warrior and statesman. If Mr. Gary really believes himself to be the only writer at present able to arrive at a play on words this trivial, that is another problem entirely, perhaps more psychiatric than literary, and I certainly hope he works it out.
Thomas Pynchon,
New York City.
Posted by: Jason | June 26, 2007 at 01:02 PM
Given later events, I wonder if Pynchon came to regret some of these words, which reminds me: Another place American readers can find out more about Gary is, sadly, Styron's Darkness Visible.
Posted by: Erika D. | June 26, 2007 at 05:43 PM