But here my Muse her wing maun cour,
Sic flights are far beyond her power;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch’d,
And thought his very een enrich’d:
Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain,
And hotch’d and blew wi’ might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a thegither,
And roars out, “Weel done, Cutty-sark!”
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied.
When out the hellish legion sallied.

—Robert Burns, from Tam O’ Shanter

You say that I have no originality. Now mark this, prince—there is nothing so offensive to a man of our time and race than to be told that he is wanting in originality, that he is weak in character, has no particular talent, and is, in short, an ordinary person. You have not even done me the honour of looking upon me as a rogue. Do you know, I could have knocked you down for that just now! You wounded me more cruelly than Epanchin, who thinks me capable of selling him my wife! Observe, it was a perfectly gratuitous idea on his part, seeing there has never been any discussion of it between us! This has exasperated me, and I am determined to make a fortune! I will do it! Once I am rich, I shall be a genius, an extremely original man. One of the vilest and most hateful things connected with money is that it can buy even talent; and will do so as long as the world lasts.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

I knew a young lady of the last “romantic” generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamozov

I read the script years ago. That was a sort of hobby of mine for a while, when I had a lot of discretionary time. I read a lot of great movies, and have since forgotten how they go. I remembered The Apartment in snatches, but had forgotten most of it, and I’m glad. Thanks to Wilder, the gorgeous Shirley MacLaine, and Lemmon’s excellent performance, this film far transcends the script.

Jack Lemmon’s character, Bud, is a goofy actuary who works in desk city (this is before there were cubicles) on the floor. This sounds terrible and boring, but it’s funny; it’s Jack Lemmon, come on. There are some people who don’t have to do anything anymore; they can just stand there and their presence can make us laugh. (It’s probably our expectations making us laugh… We’re trained to think they’re funny by their previous performances, so they are.) Billy Crystal and Bill Murray are two others who can be funny in almost any circumstance. And it’s a good thing: Lemmon’s humor and Shirley MacLaine’s response provide good counterpoint to what’s actually going on.

The Apartment is a dark, comedic, and well-executed film.  Billy Wilder is a master of sometimes subtle symbolism, and a good director.  His storytelling is particularly effective; it doesn’t lag, and it’s not oppressive; it’s bittersweet. It has many happy moments as well, but interpreted through the larger picture of the film, even those sour a bit—though the ending is another story entirely. But I won’t ruin that. Unless I just did.

As I watch and read more widely acknowledged classics, I’m discovering a lot of stuff other folks take for granted. Example: Shakespeare is a good writer. So is Ernest Hemingway. And Shirley MacLaine is beautiful.

Le Petit Prince, as the book is called in its original French, is a classic on the order of Pilgrim’s Progress and Das Kapital; it’s timeless and heartbreakingly beautiful. The author, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, used his experience, as a pilot who crashed in the desert and a witness to the general melancholy of midwar Europe, as fodder. The narrator is also a pilot who has crashed in the desert and despairs of being rescued. The way he describes the desert is particularly apt, and gave me the sense he wasn’t talking about the desert. Lines like:

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well”

show the little prince’s wisdom. This scene with the fox particularly resonates with me. The fox begins:

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose—” said the little prince so he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose…”

Exupéry was a thoughtful, quiet man. I’m looking forward to reading his autobiography, Wind, Sand and Stars, which I found in a thrift store for 50 cents. It’s waiting on my shelf for me to finish the other stacks.

His pen and ink illustrations are excellent as well, and add to the journal-ish feel, as well as contributing to the characterization of both the narrator and the prince. The scene in which we meet the prince uses the drawings brilliantly; it even uses their self-admittedly poor quality. All of the comments on imagination and faith the narrator has been making focus down on the prince in that moment, though he is completely unaware of his heightened state of enlightenment.

The best sections of the book were the cumulative expressions of the love the narrator had for the prince, and Exupéry’s explication of loneliness, loss, and innocence. Passages like this one foreshadow heavily:

“Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came,” the snake spoke again. “But you are innocent and true, and you come from a star . . .”

The little prince made no reply.

“You move me to pity—you are so weak on this Earth made of granite,” the snake said. “I can help you, some day, if you grow too homesick for your own planet. I can—”

“Oh! I understand you very well,” said the little prince. “But why do you always speak in riddles?”

“I solve them all,” said the snake.

And they were both silent.

The bittersweetness of friendship and loss runs through the book—the prince and his tamed fox, for instance, and of course the narrator and the prince. The little prince’s grave and chidish wisdom made me love him as much as the narrator does. It’s a touching book, profoundly sad and pure. You can read it for free online.