Dr. Joe’s Book of the Month – James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon”

BLOG #40, SERIES #6
WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JO
DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB #45
JAMES HILTON’S LOST HORIZON
October 7, 2015

Since the advent of this novel in 1933, Shangri-La, the setting for this utopian novel, has come to mean a place of peace and contentment to people all around the world.

James Hilton (1900 – 1954) was, like most of his contemporaries, deeply impacted by what contemporaries called “The Great War” (World War I). A war so horrific, many wondered if it would doom civilization. Hilton, born in England, wrote several books exploring aspects of the war. This one, however, set in 1931, conceptualized a mythical utopia set high in one of the remotest parts of the Himalayas. Here, if the world self-destructed, civilized life could be given a chance for a rebirth in Shangri-La, where the High Lama has discovered the secret of extending life beyond even 200 years.

The vehicle bringing five passengers (four British, one American) is a high altitude plane that somehow made it to the mountains of the Blue Moon.

It is a riveting romance that has fascinated readers and movie-goers ever since it was printed. Its original publisher: William Morrow & Co., Inc. It was widely reprinted in hardback by Grosset & Dunlap and in trade paper by Pocket Books.

Questions readers will ask themselves are these: How much of this book could be true? What lessons about life can be learned by reading it? Is it a true happier-ever-after utopia—or might it have elements of a dystopia in it?

When you purchase your own copy, be sure it is unabridged. It’s not a very long book anyway.

M O V I E S

(1983Twyman Catalogue)

Two movies have been made from this book:

1937 – B&W – 138 minutes –
Frank Capra (Producer and Director)
Robert Riskin (Writer)
Dimitri Tiompkin (Musical Score)
Actors: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Sam Jaffe, H. B. Warner, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton, Isabelle Jewell, Margo – Academy Awards (2).
Nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor.

It is a rare movie masterpiece that touches the heart of all who experience its dream—that some little plot of earth exists to which one can retreat, safe from the ravages of time and the world—one’s own little Shangri-La.

(1980 Clem Williams Film Catalogue)

1973 – Color – 150 min. – Columbia

Charles Jarrott (Director)
Ross Hunter (Producer)
Larry Kramer (Screenwriter)
Burt Bacharach (Music)
Hal David (Lyrics)
Actors: Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Sally Kellerman, Charles Boyer, George Kennedy, Michael York, Olivia Hussey, Sir John Gielgud

50 TAKES ON WISDOM

BLOG #12, SERIES #6
WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE
50 TAKES ON WISDOM
March 25, 2015

What would you get if you asked fifty of the world’s most eminent people to share with you the most significant insights into wisdom they’d gleaned from this thing called “life”? That’s exactly what photographer and film-maker Andrew Zuckerman did in his wondrous volume titled Wisdom (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2008).

Interviewees included the likes of Richard Rogers, Chuck Close, Madeleine Albright, Burt Bacharach, Andrew Wyeth, Buzz Aldrin, Desmond Tutu, Judi Dench, Clint Eastwood, Michael Parkinson, Ted Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Robert Redford, Frank Gehry, Henry Kissinger, Rosamunde Pilcher, Jane Goodall, Alan Arkin, Dave Brubeck, and Vaclev Havel.

In his insightful “Afterword,” Zuckerman explores the evolution of his concept:

It is very hard to tell another human being that he or she is an icon, and that you’re there to extract the wisdom out of their iconic beings. It doesn’t sit well. People are people. We’re sitting down to have a conversation. I’m a young person conversing with an older person and there’s a certain human engagement. I thought: what no one has a problem with is being a human being. Everyone is human. I kept thinking about this idea of setting out on this amazing adventure to create a field guide for navigating one’s life. I wanted to explore what it is to be human, to hear from people who have lived for a long time and have an enormous amount of experience. . . .

I’m thirty years old and at this point in my life most of my generation, my peers, are creating work that is a mirror of youth culture. Our society is obsessed with youth. I have never understood that. My whole life, I’ve enjoyed meeting accomplished older people–it just seemed logical to me that these are the people who had done it. They have all the secrets. Why wouldn’t you ask them? ‘What secrets does youth hold? How did you do it? And how do you feel now about how you did it? And what did you learn?

* * * * *

It took me most of a week to fully digest all this, and the several hundred 3 x 5 note cards on which I copied quotations. I’ll be sharing with our readers in our daily quotation tweets.

C O D A

I take very serious these daily quotations. Quite candidly, one of my biggest fears is that my reference field would be too narrow, reflect my own reading too much, my own academic fields of expertise too much, my own era too much. With these concerns ever in my mind, even though I already have millions of quotations to draw from, I’m constantly seeking new sources of fresh wisdom.

Consequently, I consider it providential that our son Greg already had this seminal book in his personal library so that I could immerse myself in it.

I’m hoping you’ll agree.

I’ll start out with a longer quote from the book – too long for a tweet. On being asked what sessions stood out to him most, Zuckerman responded with:

One was Chuck Close, who spoke of the enormous amount of information contained in the topography of a face. He said, ‘If you’ve laughed your whole life you have laugh lines, if you’ve frowned your whole life you have furrows in your brow. Sometimes you have both, and most people have a kind of duality of life experience, some tragedy and some great moments of extreme happiness, and I don’t want one of those to overwhelm the other.’ It’s true. There’s an enormous amount to communicate in a portrait that can’t be communicated in words. The face reveals the journey traveled. And one of the incredible things about photographing people at this stage in their lives is that they’ve had quite a long journey and the information in the face was really what I was there to capture with the utmost clarity.