HARVEST AT RANDOM I don't know what the connection might be, but since we have been
involved in the Terri Schiavo story, I have been led to think again-and-again of a novel I read many years ago. I remember where I was living at the time so it has to have been in 1941 – probably some month shortly before “Pearl Harbor Day” in December which was an event which reshaped our futures in so many ways.
The title was “ Random Harvest” and author James Hilton had , at that time, given us “Lost Horizons” and “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.” Both of those became films of note, but I can't recall a movie of “Random Harvest”.
The plot was somewhat quirky. It was sentimental,too, and I see now why I think of it in relation to the Schiavo story. The hero of the novel was just at the age when he was going off to Cambridge University when he was a drafted into the British Army and sent to the continent. Hilton put him through a series quickly-paced wartime experiences to show the Englishman's attitude toward war as he accepted commands and did things he would not, ordinarily, never have done. He did not like his life in the army; but he saw it all from almost a humorous viewpoint. I have an idea this view and sentiments expressed were largely those of Hilton telling this story from a rather strange angle as an observer of sorts including a climatic one said to be suicidal These were the years between the two great wars, remember - not exactly the steadiest of times for any of any of us.
As reader's we met the hero as a half-alive person seated on a lonely park bench in Liverpool, England. He sits there alone and desperately tries to remember anything. He recalls what he wanted to do before the totally blank portion of his wartime years. He remembers nothing whatever of that phase of his life yet wants to know! He will never stop attempting to bring in the random harvest of his lost week, months or years.
Events coming to an end today? ...tomorow? in Florida, will haunt us for many years to come... as a random harvest of ideals gone awry in ways we never expected could happen.
A.L.M. March 26, 2005 [c396wds]
