Heaven is a Place Where Nothing Ever Happens

I never read a book so fast in my life.

I only picked up the thing at 4:00 PM yesterday and I set it down, finished, no later than 12:45 AM.

And in between I stopped to have dinner, goof off on the web, and then watch television with Chiara for an hour or so.

When I was a teenager and had the chicken pox, I read all of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books over a three day lie in at home, but I've never had anything like that sort of reader's rapidity or endurance since.

I mean all of this as a compliment. Lost Horizon is a charming and affecting adventure story and that I devoured it as I did is a testament to how much fun it was to read.

I have this kind of goal - to read all of the classic adventure novels. And this is one of the real classics. Published in 1933, Lost Horizon invented and introduced to the world Shangri-La, the lamasery hidden in the Himalayas where one may find immortality and wisdom and peacefulness.

What I found so deeply charming about the mythical place and the protagonist of the book is how willing Hilton is to celebrate indolence, anomie, and insouciance. This novel is a fullthroated rebuttal to the very notion of the protestant work ethic; a downright celebration of procrastination and laziness.

Our hero, Conway, is made of the stuff one would expect from heroes - he's handsome and athletic, accomplished and brilliant. But he is also completely uninterested in success and has a midlevel consular job that he doesn't give two damns about. He isn't particularly amorous and doesn't get too worked up over right and wrong. He's like Allan Quatermain on Prozac. This is a hero I can get behind.

And the most remarkable thing, when considering how little time it took me to read the book, is how little actually happens in it. The opening chapters are replete with mystery and tension and high adventure and the closing chapter has an echo of that frenetic energy, but in between it is, quite literally, a book in which three or four not that interesting people sit around tables and chat.

And yet, you just barrel through the thing. Or anyway, I did. It is no wonder Shangri-La, based on the Hindu/Buddhist myth of Shambhala, should have passed so completely into our own mythology; it is a delightful idea, an Eden of the sort that those of us who do not admire asceticism can cling to, a heaven with sex and drinking and popular music.

Anyway, this "review" is already too long. This is a wonderful little book and you should read it.