Lost Horizon : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Classic Story
Review: My interest in reading Lost Horizon came from having seen the Frank Capra film several times. I was aware that the produces of the film had tried to remain as close to the book as possible but I found the differences between the book and the film to be refreshing.

Lost Horizon is a riveting book that is difficult to put down. One might classify the book as part adventure, part philosophy in the blending of the exotic location and Christian and Buddhist beliefs. It is needless to say that the book is well written; the chapter I found of highest interest is Robert Conway's conversation with the High Lama. The writing of that chapter was so very natural and the discussion of such interest it was like being an observer of the scene, and was a chapter I did not want to break.

The characters of the four kidnapped people, Mallinson, Miss Brinklow, Barnard and Conway are subtly drawn and their different reactions to Shangri-La are interesting. Miss Brinklow wants to create a Christian mission, Barnard is eluding the law and happy to have found a safe haven and Mallinson cannot be reconciled with the peaceful paradise of the lamasery; but it is Conway, of course, who has center stage. The character of Conway, a world-weary man who discovers that Shangri-La as a place of destiny, must reflect much from the personality of James Hilton. Conway is very complex; a person who has wisdom beyond his years but is not, as he confesses, a hero and is partly a coward. Indeed, Conway's firm decision to remain at Shangri-La is successfully changed by Mallinson. The conversation between the High Lama and Conway expresses many ideas that applied to Hilton's time and also to the present day. The description by the High Lama of the "coming storm" struck me as appropriate for today. In Hilton's time there was the threat of war on a vast scale as Japan had its eye on occupying large parts of China and the rise of Fascism. Today, it is world terrorism and leaders that want to take us into war without having a clue to the consequences.

In short, this is a marvelous tale that is fantastic to read; a book that one can re-read with great pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: MY FAVORITE STORY
Review: When I was a teenager, I went to see the movie Lost Horizon seven times. During my 74 years, I read the book many times. After I retired, I made four trips to that part of the world, and spent many months each time searching for that wonderful Shangri-La dream. If you have never read Hilton's classic, and you are a person with an optimistic spiritual outlook, then The Lost Horizon is a must for you. If you read it and want to believe it, then you should visit Burma and the temples of the ancient city of Pagon, and then spend time in the three kingdoms of the Himalayas: Nepal, Ladakh and Bhutan, in that order. You will be moved to tell others, or write about your spiritual experience. I was so moved. May your days be filled with the magic of life. Sirrom

Rating:
Summary: unabashedly sentimental
Review: When we were kids, our grandparents used to take us to Radio City Music Hall for the movie and Christmas Pageant every year. The year I was 12, the movie was a remake of Lost Horizon--my most graphic memory from that night is my horror when the woman suddenly aged after leaving Shangri-La. As it turns out, that version of the movie is pretty dreadful, while Frank Capra's 1937 original is widely considered to be a classic. At any rate, I liked the film enough to read the book and also Hilton's other classic, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and I loved them both. Recently, our library got a restored edition of the Capra film and we enjoyed it thoroughly. So I went back & reread the books.

I assume most folks know at least the rough outlines of the stories. In Lost Horizon, Hugh Conway, a British diplomat, is skyjacked and he & his traveling companions end up in the Himalayas. Eventually they are lead to the hidden Valley of the Blue Moon and the city of Shangri-La, where folks do not age and the powers that be are collecting all of the world's knowledge and greatest artworks, so that it will be safe from the turbulent political storms of the outside world. Eventually, the high lama reveals to the diplomat that he has been chosen to take over leadership of Shangri-La and after an abortive attempt to leave (at the insistence of one of his fellow travelers), Conway returns to assume his destined place in Shangri-La.

Good-bye, Mr. Chips, on the other hand, is about an eccentric but lovable British schoolmaster, Arthur Chipping (Mr. Chips). Seemingly destined to be a bachelor for life, he meets and marries a young woman who loosens him up quite a bit, before dying in childbirth. Chips is left alone, except that is for the succeeding generations of boys who pass through Brookfield School. After decades at the school, he retires, telling the assembled alumni, "I have thousands of faces in my mind. ... I remember you as you are. That's the point. In my mind you never grow old at all", only to be called back during WWI, at which point he becomes acting headmaster. One of his duties is to read the list of the school's war dead; for everyone else they are just names, but for Chips, each name has a face attached. After the War he reretires, after 42 years teaching Roman History and Latin at Brookfield.

On the surface, these two stories couldn't be more different, but reading them now I realize how similar they actually are. Shangri-La is an oasis of civilzation in a world that was after all between two World Wars. It is a place where the great achievements of our culture will be preserved, even if war consumes the rest of the World, which for much of this Century seemed like a possibility. Mr. Chips, meanwhile, is the living embodiment of institutional memory. The classes of boys, the teachers and headmasters, even the subjects and teaching methods, come and go, but Chips has remained throughout. He "still had those ideas of dignity and generosity that a frantic world was forgetting." He embodies the pre-War world and its values. In his book Mr. Bligh's Bad Language, Greg Dening says that: "Institutions require memory. A memory creates precedent and order." In the very midst of an epoch that was witnessing an unfettered attack on all of the West's institutions and values, Hilton created Shangri-La and Mr. Chips; both represent the conservative ideal--providing a bridge of memory to all that is beautiful and good and decent in our past, lest, in our zeal to create a perfect world, we forget the qualities and accomplishments which bequeathed us the pretty good world in which we live.

These books are unabashedly sentimental and I'm sure some would even find them mawkish. But I love them and I appreciate the subtley non-political way in which they make the most important of political points: even as we move forward we must always preserve those things and ideas of value in our past.

Mr. Chips GRADE: A+

Lost Horizon GRADE: A