A Journey in Time

 

A Journey in Time

I have included the most recent draft of my unfinished (unfinished because, if you think about it, it never can be finished) novel "A Journey In Time", because this was the trigger for "The Book of Days", and so it belongs here.

During the 1990s, working decidedly full-time in a boarding school, and trying to bring up a family in any spare moments that occurred, my aspirations as a writer had to be put on hold; but at the same time I knew that, without the discipline of daily writing, I would be unable to use effectively the occasional literary moments that did arise - school holidays mostly, and for one three-month period my recovery from spine surgery. So I compelled myself to keep a daily journal that was more than just a record of banal events. So, when nothing of any significance had happened to me yet again that day, I found myself perusing almanacs to see if something significant had happened to someone else that day: the publication of a book maybe, the discovery of something scientific perhaps, the end of a war or the death of a tyrant hopefully, the premiere of a symphony or play that has endured.

All of which led, inevitably, to the realisation that the writing of a complete world history could indeed be interesting, but was unlikely to be achieved by me. Yes, but what if I were to narrow that history down to just a single day? What if, instead of trying to compile the ultimate history book - the world, human life, and everything in it - what if I attempted instead, not quite that complete history, but at least a good fragment, a one three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth part of the universe, or slightly less, if it’s a leap year?

But which day? Well, which day would you choose? Your own birthday, obviously. So "A Journey In Time" was born, and gradually developed over the next several years, and then got abandoned when I decided, what the hell, let's have a go at the world history anyway. So "The Book of Days" was born, and it too, twenty-plus years later, remains, as it always will and must do, incomplete.

And somewhere along the way I even wrote a blurb for the novel, which I likewise cannot resist including here:

“A Journey In Time” is in part a comic satire, in part a love story, in part a serious exploration of the themes of time as history, as physics, as fiction, as the “making of an illusion of order out of the illusion of disorder”, as change which never changes and the constancy of change which always does. 

David Kalischer, an English university lecturer in history, has become convinced that the traditional method of teaching history has failed, and sets out to study and record history in a novel manner that will transcend all national, cultural, pedagogical and religious boundaries, and thereby render the teaching of history free from any taint of propaganda; no more the chronological history of kings and queens, of scientific discoveries, of movements in Art, of wars and revolutions, of sporting records, all of which tell just their fragment of the universe, and fail to make any connection with the others. Instead - the universal history of June 27th, which just happens to be his birthday, though clearly any date would do. Who was born, who died, and what events worth the remembering have been recorded. And then the connections, the recurrent themes, the leitmotifs, from which the complete human condition may be construed, described, and maybe even improved. Using the Internet alongside traditional research tools, travelling across... well, mostly Europe and the United States, but nevertheless... this journey in time takes the reader from the monasteries of the Middle Ages to the founding of California by the Spanish, from the chocolate-makers of Cologne to the individuals, them especially, the ones who searched for freedom and identity in the present, while also seeking redemption from the inherited sins and errors of the past… and in so doing not only writes a universal history after all, but explores the very nature of time and history themselves.

And along the way, because a commercially reliable novel needs love, sex and romance as well as gratutious violence and incompetent police inspectors, he meets, and falls in love with, a beautiful American woman who happens to be named Amelia Earhart, who is obsessed with retracing every detail in the life and death of her famous namesake, and who is not so much researching the history of her birthdate, January 6th, as trying to locate and build an association with all the people who happen by pure random chance to have been born the same day as her. Their love affair ultimately collapses under the weight of academic rivalry and a belief that the other is pursuing a pointless because unattainable goal - neither able to see the futility of their own endeavour.

The journey is time is also fully illustrated, telling the history of timepieces from the Egyptian water clock to the Chinese Su Song clock to the invention of Coordinated Universal Time, virtual clocks and the dream of time-travel.

Gare St Lazare Paris