A Tale of Two Books: The Alchemist & The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist are two of the most popular books in history, each selling over 150 million copies. Both are simple yet convoluted tales set in fantastical places. However only one of these books is worth the read, multiple reads in fact, while the other comes across like an inspirational poster on a middle school teacher’s wall.

The first half of Coelho’s book isn’t awful, following a boy in search of treasure, but the writing, attempting some kind of mythic, becomes tedious and facile. “Well, why did you say that I don’t know about love?” the sun asked the boy. More than anything though, it is the repetition of the two phrases Personal Legend and Soul of the World that tips the experience into something barely worth skimming.

Saint-Exupéry’s tale, on the other hand, straddles the wonder of a child’s imagination and philosophical reflection.

It offers a fairly simple rundown of the problems of mankind but with wonderful phrasings such as If you tame me, then we’ll need each other. Most of all, it is the structure of the work, the little prince an apparition to a man lost in the desert, and the painful finale where nothing is resolved. We just want the little prince to come back.

The Fantasy of Reality

Luis Bunuel wrote in his autobiography My Last Sigh, “Our imagination, and our dreams, are forever invading our memories; and since we are all apt to believe in the reality of our fantasies, we end up transforming our lies into truths.” The Fantasy of RealityGreenlandic explorer Knud Rasmussen reflected in his journals from the Fifth Thule Expedition, “Here on this lonely spit of land, weary men had toiled along the last stage of their mortal journey. Their tracks are not effaced, as long as others live to follow and carry them farther; their work lives as long as any region of the globe remains for men to find and conquer.” The Fantasy of Reality Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote in The Little Prince, “A geographer is too important to go wandering about. He never leaves his study. But he receives the explorers there. He questions them, and he writes down what they remember. And if the memories of one of the explorers seems interesting to him, then the geographer conducts an inquiry into that explorer’s moral character.”  The Fantasy of RealityAnd finally Italo Svevo offered these musings from Zeno’s Conscience: “Simply, I believed I had made an important scientific discovery. I thought I had been called upon to complete the whole theory of psychological colors. My predecessors, Goethe and Schopenhauer, had never imagined what could have been achieved by deftly handling complementary colors.” The Fantasy of Reality“I should say that I spent my time sprawled on the sofa opposite my study window, from which I had a view of a stretch of sea and horizon.”

Survival Guide: An Upward Turn

As you start to adjust to the imminent end – now just three days away – your life should become calmer and more organized. You are in the upward turn. (That was quick!) Your physical symptoms lessen, and your depression begins to lift slightly. The closing of Mozart’s La Nozze di Figaro just might be, as artist Ragnar Kjartansson suggests, the most beautiful minutes of music ever recorded. Put it on a loop and listen again and again. Phone 167Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is an absolute treasure, combining sophisticated story-telling with joyous detail and wit. I guess my point is, we’ll eat tonight, and we’ll eat together. And even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals I’ve ever met in my life. So let’s raise our boxes – to our survival. mrfoxThe Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is also something to behold. It’s short and lovely and there’s pictures too. All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.princeIt’s time to get out there and do something active. Ride a bike, go for a walk or a swim, do anything but a run. That’s bad for your knees and hips.