Book Report: Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper
While still in his teens in 1934, Patrick Leigh Fermor, high school drop-out, unemployable gadabout decided to walk from Amsterdam to Constantinople, and bathed in an ancient Europe that was crumbling, literally before his eyes. The trip was set down on paper 40 years later in A Time of Gifts and Between the Water and the Woods, for my money the greatest travel books ever written, if for nothing else how they recorded the intellectual journey of a young man falling in love with the idea that everything around us is the seed of things that happened far back in the mists of time, and there is no calling more fascinating than tracing back those branches.
PLF grew up to become probably as close to the model for Indiana Jones as any human ever did: a classicist, linguist, adventurer, war hero, perpetrator of an untold number of crazed love affairs. A humanist in arms; passionately apolitical and conscious of how the manias of modern politics are likely to trample on all that is noble and uplifting in society.
Put simply, any young man who reads about Patrick Leigh Fermor and doesn't want to be him is not to be trusted.
Artemis Cooper has written a beautiful and touching biography of our hero. Having known him towards the end of his 90 plus year life, her sympathy for him radiates through the book, but an fearless historian, she lets him get away with nothing and his many, many faults are diligently cataloged. Which is frankly how I like my heroes, full of faults. Perfection is for statues, and not very good statues at that. Believing your heroes are perfect is for political zealots, simpletons and publicists.
Most pleasing was it to hear about the epic procrastinations Paddy would undergo, handing in magazine assignments years late; books could take a decade and require him to look himself away in monasteries to finish. The internet didn't invent procrastination apparently.
The final chapters brought me to constant tears I must say. Not that anything terribly tragic happened - he died peacefully and comfortably in his 90's, but the specter of someone so brimming with life and intellect slowing down was horrible to take in. Devastating when he finally leaves us at the end.
And I didn't know enough about Artemis Cooper before this, but she is apparently the wife of Anthony Beevor and the daughter of John Julius Norwich as well as the author of some fascinating looking books in her own right. I will investigate further.
Very lovely book. To be read after reading Time for Gifts.
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