Promise at Dawn--Romain Gary--5 stars

[Michael]

I read this for the Autobiography tag, but I just as well post it here considering the incredible strength of character and influence on the son and author.

Helen’s face may have launched a thousand ships in the Iliad, but Roman Gary’s mother takes the prize for launching and totally shaping her son’s dramatic life. The successes of Gary’s career--a prize-winning novelist, an officer who was brave against the enemies of France in WW2, and a diplomat for the French government--were all worked out from early childhood through collusion with her ambitious fantasies for his fate. She outdoes the grip of McCourt’s mom his development in “Angela’s Ashes” and is more persistently indelible than Jeanette Wells’ mother in “The Glass Castle.” Yet here we get a prolonged testament of the beneficence of her love through his life, which puts it more in league with the positive testament of McBride’s “The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother.” The tradeoff for Gary comes in the discovery much later of not being able to achieve a comparable nurturing and inspiration through love relationships as a mature adult. You can’t help looking for the psychopathology in this bond, but more often I was swept along with the sentimental and heroic aspects of the story.

We start with him in his 40s, inexplicably on a beach in Big Sur, California, about 1960, where he dwells on his sense of isolation and seeking the womb-like balm he often gets from the sea. He can’t help recognizing the void in his life with the loss of his mother, Mina, during the war. From as early as he can remember, it was just her and him, starting with an early impoverished childhood in Vilnius (then part of the Soviet Union), his Jewish father having abandoned them. Her past as a minor actress in Moscow gives her the imagination for a better life for her son. She works her way up from menial jobs to a certain level of success running a consignment shop and then after a move to Warsaw the development of a store selling fake Paris fashions. The lure of France becomes big for both of them and soon her approach to bankruptcy after expensive treatments of Romain’s kidney disease leads them to gamble on a move to Nice. She makes enough, with a lot of sacrifice, to get him a Catholic education. It was painful for me to experience her working out her dreams of a brilliant future for him in one sphere after another, first in music, then in dance, and painting after that, in each case resulting in a thumb-down verdict by his teachers and tutors about any special talents. Finally, his reading of so much Romantic literature at an early age leads them to settle on writing, which for Mina is on the track toward a Nobel Prize in literature.

Romain develops the good habits of a writer but doesn’t exactly rise like a rocket. In the meantime, he goes off to law school out of secondary school, consistent with another dream they cook up for him to eventually become a French ambassador. The approach of war leads them next to pursue officers training school, which aligns with a state department ambition as well as serving their beloved new nation. Romain spends quite a bit of time defending this case of a mother and son living through and for each other as wholesome and not a reflection of various Freudian complexes. Yet is first experience of sex in his early teens with a charming housemaid leads her to a searing judgement:

”Mother or no mother, there will never be another woman to love you the way she does. That’s God’s honest truth”.
It was. But I didn’t know it then. It was only after my fortieth winter that I began to understand. It was wrong to have been loved so much so young, so early … you thus acquire a bad habit, the worst habit there is: the habit of being loved.
…You believe …that it will always be there around you,… that the world owes it to you, and you keep looking, thirsting, summoning, until you find yourself … with only your brother the ocean able to understand your heart. In your mother’s love, life makes you a promise at the dawn of life that it will never keep. …You will go hungry to the end of your days.

Despite this smothery theme, there was a lot of fun and vibrant life in Gary’s portrayal of scenes from his life along the way, rendered alternatingly in poignant or comic tones. His helping his mother to make income, his learning to deal with bullies at school, his inspiration from mentors of his mind and writing, and his dogged persistence in getting through the rigors and cruelty of aviation training school. Then his separation from home to go to war proudly in a bomber squadron, followed soon by abject despair and a sense of betrayal over France’s surrender to Hitler and then a succumbing to the call by de Gaulle in exile in England to flee and fight on, first in Morocco and then with the Allies from a base in England. Only 5 of 50 in his group of foreign exiles survived the war. He kept up his writing and published his first novel by the end of the war. After the war, in parallel to his work in the diplomatic corps, his writing of a range of novels earned him two Prix Concourt awards (Roots of Heaven, 1958; The Life Before Us, 1975—both of which were made into films). Gary’s use of humor makes his memoirs a special treat, ranging from slapstick and low humor on one end to refined self-mockery and satirical lashings of humans in general on the other.

Beyond the frame of this book, Gary got divorced from his first wife and soon married the talented and troubled actress Jean Seberg, with whom he had a son. He got involved in Hollywood scriptwriting (e.g. “The Longest Day” as well as adaptations of his own book). Wiki surprises me by informing me that Gary challenged Clint Eastwood to a duel for having an affair with his wife. She committed suicide in France in 1979 and he did so a year later, leaving a note that claimed a lack of connection to his choice. Success in his life I guess did not guarantee a durable happiness. His talent in telling a story well lives on.

[Anita]

Michael wrote: "I read this for the Autobiography tag, but I just as well post it here considering the incredible strength of character and influence on the son and author.

Helen’s face may have launched a thousa..."

This one sounds fascinating! I have to confess, not sure I've ever heard of Romain Gary before this review. Should I be embarrassed? But after your review and perusing the one in the NYT, I must say this sounds very, very interesting. Great write up!! You should write for the NYT. Your review is better . . .

[Kristel]

I enjoyed this one, too and I really like this author’s writing.

[Michael]

Anita wrote: "...This one sounds fascinating! I have to confess, not sure I've ever heard of Romain Gary ..."

Thanks so kindly. I had never heard of him either. Lots of novelists are popular for awhile and then fade out of attention. His first novel was among the first for the generation racing to get their war experience captured in print, but it was written in French and didn't stand up to Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, James Jones, and Herman Wouk. His "Roots of Heaven" is on the 1001 Books list, but it is unusual that this autobiography made it into the list.

[Michael]

Kristel wrote: "I enjoyed this one, too and I really like this author’s writing."

I appreciated your review awhile back. Not too many autobiographies on the 1001 list. Thinking of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Any others not sure.

[Kristel]

Michael wrote: "Kristel wrote: "I enjoyed this one, too and I really like this author’s writing."

I appreciated your review awhile back. Not too many autobiographies on the 1001 list. Thinking of Primo Levi and E..."
Elie Wiesel is actually not on the list. I think of these off the top of my head;
Out of Africa
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

All quickely, there may be more.

[Idit]

Authors and their mums...
I think Elias Canetti has a very good autobiography with a very strong mum as well

Thanks for the review - it sounds tempting

I loved Romain Gary's book The Kites and read it in my youth quite often. I'm a bit scared to read it again in case I wouldn't love it as much. (by the way - it has a strong woman as well).
Also have fond memories of his book (as Émile Ajar - The Life Before Us

[Michael]

Idit wrote: "Authors and their mums...
I think Elias Canetti has a very good autobiography with a very strong mum as well..."

Thanks so much for the recommendation.

[Anita]

Michael wrote: "Anita wrote: "...This one sounds fascinating! I have to confess, not sure I've ever heard of Romain Gary ..."

Thanks so kindly. I had never heard of him either. Lots of novelists are popular for a..."

I feel relief that I'm not the only one who wasn't familiar with Romain Gary . . .and I read quite a bit with the 1001 group that Jen and Kristel run, and yet still didn't recollect the name. Thank you for providing some context.

[Kristel]

We just read The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary in September 2017 as BOTM in Reading 1001. It was a 5 star read for me. Romain Gary also wrote under several different names.