Books: Aviator’s Epic

NIGHT FLIGHT — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry—Century. Author St. Exupery used to be an aviator but he does not write like any of the aviators with whose literary experiments the U. S. public is familiar. Night Flight, a second novel, is a brief account of disaster on the South American airmail. Fabien, carrying the mail from the far South to Buenos Aires, flies through a golden twilight in which “night was rising like a tawny smoke.” Presently the evening becomes less calm. At the airport, Rivière, “who was responsible for the entire service,” waits anxiously for Fabien and two other mail planes to arrive. Rivière’s aim is to “love the men under your orders but do not let them know it.” Cold hostility for the minor inefficiencies that, in a flying service, are the likeliest causes of catastrophe, makes him appallingly but mercifully severe. While Riviere waits, two of the planes arrive. Fabien’s young wife comes to the airport to inquire about him. Says Riviere: “Unfortunately, neither you nor I can do anything except wait.” Meanwhile, Fabien’s plane is being wrecked in a cyclone over the coast. Riviere knows it but he does not give the order to suspend night flying which his subordinates expect. An epic figure of courage that is the more intense for being vicarious, he instructs the pilot who is waiting to take off with the Europe mail to wait no longer. With Saint Saturnin (see below), Night Flight is a Book-of-the-Month Club offering.