A Single Pebble John Hersey
I just finished an interesting book that you may want to consider adding to your “to read” list. It’s John Hersey’s A Single Pebble. You might remember Hersey’s much more famous book, Hiroshima.
A Single Pebble takes you to China. A 23 year old American engineer, almost fresh out of school, travels the Yangtze River, the one the Chinese call “the Great,” to help his company decide if they want to convince the Chinese government to build a big power project, a dam, in one of the river’s gorges.
The book consists of recollections of the trip after a half century of reflection, and it is, in its own way, a reflection of western thought when it collides with a vastly different culture. That same culture clash is going on today—perhaps it is always occurring in some way—and reading A Single Pebble prompts me to begin my own reflection.
While I’ve never traveled to China, I’ve read, as we all have, of its ancient culture and its traditional ways. So had the young American, the westerner armed with new ideas that could spare the workers the agony and pain of doing things the way they have been done since time immemorial. He expects to be welcomed by people ready to move eagerly toward new, modern methods. Instead he is up against resistance as solid as the gorges’ walls and as strong as the river he seeks to tame. He is baffled at their tenacious hold on the ancient ways.
“How could I span a gap of a thousand years—a millennium in a day? These people on the junk could be said to be living in the era between Charlemagne and William the Conqueror, in the time of serfs and villains, before the Crusades, before Western printing and gunpowder, long, long before Chaucer and Giotto and Thomas Aquinas and Dante. And they were satisfied (or so I thought) to exist in Dark Ages, while I lived in a time of enlightenment and was not satisfied.”
When he emerges from the river at the end of his journey, as Huck does from the Mississippi, he is a different person. He questions whether Progress is always something that builds or whether it destroys as well.
A Single Pebble introduces us to an array of unforgettable characters: the owner of the junk on which our protagonist travels; his wife, Su-ling, who knows the histories and the names of the rocks, the rapids, and the gorges; the enigmatic cook; and most importantly, the head tracker, Old Pebble, who guides the junk through the dangers of the Yangtze just as over past centuries head trackers had done before him, singing the same songs, bowing to the same superstitions and traditions.
With your imagination going full tilt, you will see the pictures Hersey’s words create, and you will begin to question the meaning of time, the power of superstition or tradition, the process of life, and the meaning of progress. You will witness winning against incredible odds and you will read of being humble before the victories of the past.
In addition, as I did, you will probably recognize a certain arrogance in the young man. But the lack of understanding is not one-sided, and neither is the culture clash. It works both ways. I am left with the question of whether we can ever truly understand one another.
BTW, the dam suggested in this 1956 book is, according to The Discovery Channel, slated to be completed in 2010!
This is an interesting book, fast reading and fewer than 200 pages. You might want to give it a try.
I just finished an interesting book that you may want to consider adding to your “to read” list. It’s John Hersey’s A Single Pebble. You might remember Hersey’s much more famous book, Hiroshima.
A Single Pebble takes you to China. A 23 year old American engineer, almost fresh out of school, travels the Yangtze River, the one the Chinese call “the Great,” to help his company decide if they want to convince the Chinese government to build a big power project, a dam, in one of the river’s gorges.
The book consists of recollections of the trip after a half century of reflection, and it is, in its own way, a reflection of western thought when it collides with a vastly different culture. That same culture clash is going on today—perhaps it is always occurring in some way—and reading A Single Pebble prompts me to begin my own reflection.
While I’ve never traveled to China, I’ve read, as we all have, of its ancient culture and its traditional ways. So had the young American, the westerner armed with new ideas that could spare the workers the agony and pain of doing things the way they have been done since time immemorial. He expects to be welcomed by people ready to move eagerly toward new, modern methods. Instead he is up against resistance as solid as the gorges’ walls and as strong as the river he seeks to tame. He is baffled at their tenacious hold on the ancient ways.
“How could I span a gap of a thousand years—a millennium in a day? These people on the junk could be said to be living in the era between Charlemagne and William the Conqueror, in the time of serfs and villains, before the Crusades, before Western printing and gunpowder, long, long before Chaucer and Giotto and Thomas Aquinas and Dante. And they were satisfied (or so I thought) to exist in Dark Ages, while I lived in a time of enlightenment and was not satisfied.”
When he emerges from the river at the end of his journey, as Huck does from the Mississippi, he is a different person. He questions whether Progress is always something that builds or whether it destroys as well.
A Single Pebble introduces us to an array of unforgettable characters: the owner of the junk on which our protagonist travels; his wife, Su-ling, who knows the histories and the names of the rocks, the rapids, and the gorges; the enigmatic cook; and most importantly, the head tracker, Old Pebble, who guides the junk through the dangers of the Yangtze just as over past centuries head trackers had done before him, singing the same songs, bowing to the same superstitions and traditions.
With your imagination going full tilt, you will see the pictures Hersey’s words create, and you will begin to question the meaning of time, the power of superstition or tradition, the process of life, and the meaning of progress. You will witness winning against incredible odds and you will read of being humble before the victories of the past.
In addition, as I did, you will probably recognize a certain arrogance in the young man. But the lack of understanding is not one-sided, and neither is the culture clash. It works both ways. I am left with the question of whether we can ever truly understand one another.
BTW, the dam suggested in this 1956 book is, according to The Discovery Channel, slated to be completed in 2010!
This is an interesting book, fast reading and fewer than 200 pages. You might want to give it a try.
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