Poet and Pilot Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Rating:
Summary: Photos from Saint-Ex's last days
Review: At age 43, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, one of the giants of aviation history, was deemed by the American commander of the Mediterranean Allied Air Force, General Eaker, to be too old to fly. Already nostalgiac about the days "when planes still had some human qualities in their imperfection and pilots did not yet look like space men," Saint-Ex sank into depression, retired to a room in Algiers to work on "Flight to Arras", then in the winter of 1943/44 met a young half-Welsh, half-American, Algerian-born photographer for LIFE, John Phillips. Phillips spoke fluent French and pilot and photographer became close friends. Phillips eventually managed to convince the commander of the Allied air squadron at Naples to let Saint-Ex have one last go at the skies, and as a result, he was sent up to the air base at Alghero, Sardinia, and during the summer of 1944 was allowed to fly reconaissance missions over Nazi-occupied France. On the last of these missions, July 31st, Saint-Exupéry disappeared, presumably shot down near Grenoble.

This book is a collection of photographs Phillips made for LIFE magazine at the air base in Sardinia during the last days of Saint-Exupéry's life, alongside a personal memoir published in 1959. Phillips' photos show us the classic Saint-Ex: left eyebrow hitched up into indifferent nonchalance by a scar he received during a botched landing in Guatemala; writer and friends enjoying some bleary-eyed, wine-induced moments of camaraderie around a table outside in the sun; Saint-Ex looking miserable as somebody helps him into his flying suit.

Phillips' short memoir is full of insight into Saint-Exupéry's character. "The reason Saint-Ex spoke no English," Phillips writes, "was simple. A perfectionist, he refused to manipulate words clumsily in a foreign language and so distort his thoughts. He would hold forth on the advantages of not speaking English in New York. 'When I need a cup of coffee, I walk up to a charming waitress and describe with gestures a cup, a saucer, a spoon, coffee, cream and sugar. This makes her smile. Why should I go to all the trouble of learning Engilsh and lose that smile?' In his enjoyment of his ignorance of the language, he created an enchanting world that isolated him from baseness as surely as the cockpit of a plane at ten thousand feet."

This book also includes Saint-Exupéry's "Letter to an American", which ought to be required reading now that France and the U.S. would rather kill each other than remember everything they've got in common.