Promise at Dawn (1960)

This is a memoir written by Romain Gary and is also a book from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Mr Gary wrote this memoir as a tribute to his mother. Romain Gary is of Jewish and Russian origin became a French citizen. He is the only son of his mother, he never knew who is father was and she raised him single-handedly and single-mindedly. The first chapter is the ending but only a glimpse and it leaves you guessing. Mr. Gary is lying on the beach at Big Sur. He also introduces us to the four gods; Stupidity, Absolute Truth, Mediocrity and Acceptance and Servility. In chapter 2, mother love is introduced. He talks about how her love made future love so difficult and he wished she would have had someone else besides to love. He talks about Freud and explores any possibility of Oedipus complex which he rejects. He describes the psychoanalysts as “sharks feeding on refuse underwater”. His mother early on painted the picture for her son’s life so concretely that Romain never questioned it. She planned that he would be an artist, he became a writer, she planned that he would get a law degree and then go into the French air force and be a lieutenant. He got his law degree, joined the air force but because of bias he was not allowed to be a commissioned officer because he hadn’t been a French citizen long enough. She planned that he would go into the diplomat service after he was out of the service. WWII came into the picture and Romain spent more time in the service than he was planned. He started as a private but he became an officer and he was decorated with the Cross of the Liberation pinned on by General de Gaulle under the Arc de Triomphe. He was not a man who was meant to kill though he was brave. He said many times that he never killed. In the end, he valued life especially the life of animals and he especially had a connection to the ocean. He felt that everything he did was really his mother’s accomplishments. She lived her dreams through her only son and he often talked about his career as a Champion of the World.
This was very good. I enjoyed his writing and humor though there is a backdrop of sadness throughout. This is not in the book but Mr Gary died in 1980 by self inflicted gunshot. His actress wife Jean Seberg committed suicide in 1979. Among his literary works areA European Education published in France in 1945 and The Roots of Heaven which one the Prix Goncourt, top French literary honor. It also became a motion picture. ( )

wonderful read if not completely believable. Writing can be pretentious. ( )