To date, I have not watched even one minute of James Cameron's historic blockbuster, Titanic (1998). I may be one of the few, for even my 12-13 year-old students have seen it and have recommended it to me. While it irritates me that Kate and Leo and Cameron's Titanic are cemented in their mind as the definitive Titanic story, I can appreciate the fact that the film provides them with an anchor for visualizing and understanding the events detailed in Walter Lord's A Night to Remember (1955), truly "the classic account of the final hours of the Titanic."I had not heard of A Night to Remember previously and was scheduled to teach it. Not a fan of the book's structure--the minute-by-minute account through no fewer than twenty different perspectives--my colleague sold me the book as a complex bore of a read. For that reason, she only ever taught excerpts of it. Going into the reading, I was tentative because it had been made so unappealing.
Far from being a boring read, A Night to Remember is a gripping and haunting account of the final hours aboard the Titanic. Lord's riveting account is the result of countless research and the fortune of having over sixty Titanic survivors available to interview more than forty years after the disaster. As as result, Lord was able to construct a vivid and seemingly thorough account of events from the time the Titanic struck the iceberg to well after the Carpathia rescued the survivors.
Of particular interest to me was Lord's description in the last few chapters of the social and cultural impact of the Titanic disaster. It is only after the Titanic has sunk that Lord steps out of the narrative to relate these particulars, especially those of the third class steerage passengers who suffered the most losses in the disaster but whose experiences were silenced, dismissed, and nearly erased from history because their voices were not particularly desirable or valuable as the lowly, "dirty" immigrants.
Nathaniel Philbrick's wonderful introduction to the fiftieth-anniversary edition set the stage for me to truly enjoy the book by counter-balancing the negative review provided by my colleague. Philbrick says it best when he concludes his introduction with the following:
From first to last, A Night to Remember is about the people who briefly inhabited the Titanic, and never again will an author have the opportunity to speak to so many of them. In this most essential way, Lord's book can never be outdone, making A Night to Remember the ultimate survivors' tale.I am especially glad that I haven't yet seen the film. Had I done so, my pleasure and appreciation of Lord's vivid storytelling would have been marred. I am also pleased that I opted to have my kids read this book to end the school year. While the story is familiar to them, the manner in which it is presented makes the text a bit complex. However, in the end, I am sure that they, too, appreciate the story for how well Lord captivated their attention and made personal and real the experiences of the people he chronicles.
This is a CBR8 crossposted review.
Comments
Post a Comment