Lost Horizon....

I finished reading a rather strange book some days ago. One of the strangest things about the book is that it is written by the same author who wrote the very real and not remotely surreal story about love in a warm, wistful, amusing, and rather lump-swallowing worthy, and matter-of-fact way - Goodbye Mr. Chips. I'll never quite forget Mr. Chips teaching Latin while shrapnel and shells are exploding and the guns are firing, and he's there gently urging his boys to concentrate while cracking jokes - 'you cannot judge the importance of things by the noise they make', before going on to remark about the importance of being employed with something appropriate if fate so decides that 'we are interrupted': the teacher who came to be regarded as a philosopher and prophet, and much in demand for his knowledge as much as for his witty one liners. It was a deep love story too, but one which ended too soon. It sort of makes my mind switch too many gears to think that it's the same author who wrote the book I just about read....but then again there are some writers who do jump worlds and with impunity, which always makes me wonder and blink some or stare or both.

The book is about Shangri-La and about one man, Hugh Conway. That magical place suspended somewhere between Tibet and India, and a man who went through the war as a young boy and worked not too rigorously nor too energetically but did just enough while working at the consulate later on. An unusual character once again but one whom I couldn't understand too well (although I harboured his head every now and again in different ways, and in an amusing way sometimes but maybe not too well). He too seemed suspended in that abnormally real and half elusive space of Shangri-La or to use two expressions - he seemed incredibly ordinary and incredibly extraordinary. I didn't know whether he was sane or not, whether he was passionate or not, whether he cared deeply or not, whether he did right or not, and he didn't share his thoughts too often and sometimes not at all - so it was difficult to guess. He seemed to be utterly unruffled on the surface and dispassionate and yet there was something underneath....quite what it was I couldn't quite get.

I didn't understand his reasons for doing what he did too well either. Indeed why he did what he did or why he even liked the young idiotic, annoying, simpering, pompous boy who was very seriously lacking any bit of substantial or likeable matter in the space between his ears. - I don't understand at all. It wasn't just the young boy. It was also about the young (ancient) Manchu girl as well who had eyes only for that young nitwit of a boy (she didn't have eyes obviously even though she could physically see quite well), and Conway did what he had to because as he said, right after he wandered around in a daze not being able to share a word of what he had heard and knew and about his own role in the world that was to come, in the whole wide world it was that stupid boy and the young (ancient) Manchu girl whom he cared for, and he didn't quite know how to explain it himself, it seemed! 'Course he had fallen for the Manchu girl. He probably even knew exactly what was going to happen but did what he did anyway. Not that his role had he stayed put didn't make me feel isolated, strange, unusual and in some ways it gave me the chills too. Now when it flutters by there is a strange lonely silence that fills me. In some ways Conway's possible role reminds me of Leto's role that he chose for himself....and regretted deeply, for the first time, in God Emperor of Dune...but that was bound to happen...didn't feel any better when it did though.

Very real in some ways and surreal in other ways and different. But unreal? That I don't know about. It felt quite real in that space and it didn't feel unusual. It was about different worlds, normal and perfectly regular ones and not-so-regular ones colliding and merging for a bit within the life of a man. I could almost perfectly sense Conway's sense of reality while talking with the ancient, ancient lama and feeling at ease in his presence, and a sublime feeling of tranquility while watching the young (ancient) Manchu girl playing on her harpischord...and then conversing quite normally with the other three characters all marooned in the monastery. None of it seemed to be particularly jarring to him until that one meeting with the lama....quite why it shook him up the way it did, I do not know. Because he had been expecting that as well. I didn't and couldn't figure out what Conway was going through when that bleating boy started bleating his head off when after Conway finishes conversing with the lama and paces around in a daze, the boy jumps on him. I just felt incredibly lonely and wished that Conway had one human being in that blasted place with whom he could talk.

Gives me an odd feeling: the book when it flutters around in my head. An eerie feeling too and a lonely one. White silence. But maybe that's not unusual given the vivid and beautiful descriptions of the place (I wish I remembered one off the top of my head). I wonder whether he went back to that world of Shangri-La or what he did. James Hilton doesn't quite say....

The book is Lost Horizon. I still can't quite believe that the same writer wrote Goodbye Mr. Chips. That really does seem to be the unreal part. Of course...if writers can't imagine what good are they?!....