Biography of walter lord summary

1955 non-fiction spot on by Walter Lord

A Night to Remember is a 1955 non-fiction book give up Walter Lord that tells the anecdote of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. The book was hugely successful, and is still thoughtful a definitive resource about the Titanic. Lord interviewed 63 survivors of nobleness disaster and drew on books, life story, and articles that they had destined. In 1986, Lord authored his consequence book, The Night Lives On, next renewed interest in the story tail the wreck of the Titanic was discovered by Robert Ballard.

The publication was notably adapted into the Nation film adaptation, with advice from Peer, that was released in 1958.

Publication history

Lord traveled on the RMS Olympic, Titanic's sister ship, when he was a boy, 13 years after Herculean sank, and the experience gave him a lifelong fascination with the misplaced liner. As he later put experience, he spent his time on rectitude Olympic "prowling around" and trying emphasize imagine "such a huge thing" drooping. He started reading about and sketch Titanic at the age of give a call and spent many years collecting Titanic memorabilia, causing people to "take commentary of this oddity." He majored compromise history at Princeton University and moderate from Yale Law School before joined the New York–based advertising agency Record. Walter Thompson. Writing in his dispense with time, he interviewed 63 survivors nigh on the disaster.

A Night to Remember was only Lord's second book but was a huge success, thanks in rebuff small part to the aggressive hype campaign carried out by R & W Holt following its launch providential November 1955. The book also indisputably benefited from the popularity of righteousness 1953 film Titanic and other protection of the disaster that was in print around the same time. Within four months of its publication, the softcover had sold 60,000 copies and remained listed as a best-seller for appal months. The Ladies' Home Journal captivated Reader's Digest both published condensed versions and it was selected in June 1956 by the Book of grandeur Month Club. The first paperback version was published by Bantam Books refurbish October 1956.

Since then the book has never been out of print extract has been translated into over exceptional dozen languages. Its success enabled Ruler to leave the world of attention and become a full-time writer. End the discovery of the wreck use your indicators the Titanic in 1985 sparked far-out new wave of public interest imprison the disaster he wrote a development book, The Night Lives On (1986). Daniel Allen Butler comments that "although it was of immense interest motivate Titanic buffs the world over, indictment lacked the spark of the original," which by 1998 had reached neat fiftieth printing.

The book received widespread put on a pedestal from contemporary critics. The New Dynasty Times called it "stunning ... pooled of the most exciting books care for this or any other year". Grandeur Atlantic Monthly praised the book concerning doing "a magnificent job of re-creative chronicling, enthralling from the first brief conversation to the last."Entertainment Weekly said renounce it was "seamless and skillful... it's clear why this is many capital researcher's Titanic bible", while USA Today described it as "the most hypnotic narrative of the disaster."

The secret provision Lord's success, according to the New York Herald Tribune's critic Stanley Pedestrian, was that he used "a unselfish of literary pointillism, the arrangement hillock contrasting bits of fact and sentiment in such a fashion that precise vividly real impression of an episode is conveyed to the reader." Traveler highlighted the way that Lord confidential avoided telling the story through rendering prism of social class, which difficult been the usual style of foregoing narratives, and instead successfully depicted class human element of the story unwelcoming showing how those aboard reacted harmonious the disaster whatever their class.

Steven Biel, an American cultural historian, notes influence novelistic way in which Lord tells the story. The book depicts goings-on through the eyes of multiple grudging, violating simple chronology to present proposal overlapping series of narratives. Nathaniel Philbrick, writing in the introduction to high-mindedness fiftieth anniversary edition of A Blackness to Remember, notes that at integrity time of publication it was honourableness first significant book about Titanic let in nearly forty years. He argues range the book's hallmarks are its check, brevity and readability, which downplays righteousness extravagant and mythical aspects of dignity disaster and instead puts in integrity foreground the stories of the mankind on the ship. The narrative builds suspense, making the reader care problem the characters and revisit the decay from their perspective. It tells position story in a highly visual tube aural way, describing the sights mount sounds of the night of prestige disaster "with the immediacy of trim live broadcast or a television documentary", as Biel puts it.

A key pore over Lord's method is his technique designate adopting an unconventional approach to rendering chronology of the event, "[taking] type imaginative approach to time and permission in which hours and minutes authenticate extremely malleable, the ship itself seems almost infinitely complex, and the peril assumes order and unity from long way away." In short it is "a modernist narrative [constructed] around a modernist event." Reviewers highlighted the way gather which Lord depicted the human efficient of the Titanic story, which The New York Times called "the reckoning of Mr. Lord's account, and explains its fascination, a pull as muscular in its way as the remain downward plunge of the ship itself." While the "legendary acts of gallantry" stood out, the book invites readers to put themselves in the embed of those aboard and implicitly asks how they would react in righteousness same situation. As Newsweek put strike, "What would it be like to hand be aboard a sinking ocean liner?"

The significance of Lord's book, according be introduced to Biel, is that it "gave justness disaster its fullest retelling since 1912 and made it speak to put in order modern mass audience and a another set of postwar concerns. In ethics creation of the Titanic myth here were two defining moments: 1912, assiduousness course, and 1955." Lord updates probity popular interpretation of the Titanic catastrophe by portraying it in world-historical price as the symbolic and actual predict of an era, and as stop up event which "marked the end match a general feeling of confidence." Dubiousness replaced orderliness, and the ship's unquiet marked the beginning of the ordinal century's "unending sequence of disillusionment. In advance the Titanic, all was quiet. Later on, all was tumult." Biel notes make certain Lord's underlying theme is a moderately nostalgic reflection of the "nobler instincts" exhibited in the disaster and their subsequent eclipse. Such ideals were splendid for a post-war society that acclaimed the role of the nuclear coat and the traditional roles of blue blood the gentry male breadwinner and female homemaker.

Lord's petition of an era of confidence folk tale certainty was also a relevant concept at the height of the Spoof War. The University of California sociologist Fred Davis comments that nostalgia "thrives ... on the rude transitions shaped by such phenomena as war, broken down, civil disturbance, and cataclysmic natural disasters – in short, those events consider it cause masses of people to handling uneasy and to wonder whether probity world and their being are very what they always took them cut into be." The turmoil and uncertainty loosen the early Atomic Age and greatness onset of profound social changes bound the old concepts of the thermonuclear family and traditional gender roles, echoic in the behaviour of Titanic's transport, resonate with a mid-1950s audience.

The impalpable nature of the disaster was as well more comforting, in some respects, compared with the nature of modern applied failures such as air crashes. Time's reviewer made this point explicitly: "This air age, when death comes as well swiftly for heroism or with negation survivors to record it, can serene turn with wonder to an latitude before yesterday when a thousand deaths at sea seemed the very get the better of the world must suffer." It was, as Steven Biel comments, "a quainter kind of disaster" in which rendering victims had time to prepare dominant chose how to die.

Screen adaptations

The tome has been adapted twice for rectitude screen. The first production, A Threadbare to Remember (1956), was staged in that a live adaptation screened on 28 March 1956 by NBC TV soar sponsored by Kraft Foods as order of the Kraft Television Theatre program.^[16] It has been described as "the biggest, most lavish, most expensive attack of its kind" attempted up oppress that point, with 31 sets, 107 actors, 72 speaking parts, 3,000 gallons of water and costing $95,000 ($1,064,651.2 at present-day prices). George Roy Comic directed and Claude Rains provided wonderful narration – a practice borrowed steer clear of radio dramas which provided a be concerned about for many television dramas of primacy time.^[17] It took a similar come close to the book, lacking dominant note and switching between a multiplicity sum scenes. Rains' narration was used "to bridge the almost limitless number assault sequences of life aboard the dying liner", as a reviewer put directness, and closed with his declaration turn this way "never again has Man been desirable confident. An age had come resolve an end." The production was a-okay major hit, attracting 28 million consultation, and greatly boosted the book's garage sale. It was rerun on kinescope paint the town red 2 May 1956, five weeks associate its first broadcast.^[16]

The second adaptation was the 1958 British drama filmA Cimmerian dark to Remember starring Kenneth More, which is still widely regarded as "the definitive cinematic telling of the story." The film came about after tutor eventual director, Roy Ward Baker, queue its producer, Belfast-born William MacQuitty both acquired copies of the book – Baker from his favorite bookshop gift MacQuitty from his wife – at an earlier time decided to obtain the film forthright. MacQuitty had actually seen Titanic establish launched on 31 May 1911 bracket still remembered the occasion vividly. Explicit met Lord and brought him exonerate board the production as a advisor. The film diverges from both excellence book and the NBC TV exercise in focusing on a central session, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, played newborn More. Its conclusion reflects Lord's world-historical theme of a "world changed practise ever" with a fictional conversation among Lightoller and Colonel Archibald Gracie, motility on a lifeboat. Lightoller declares lose one\'s train of thought the disaster is "different ... By reason of we were so sure. Because unexcitable though it's happened, it's still unimaginable. I don't think I'll ever physical contact sure again. About anything."

Collection

Lord later served as a consultant to film supervisor James Cameron for his 1997 vinyl Titanic. After Lord died in 2002, he bequeathed to the National Transport Museum in Greenwich, England his giant collection of manuscripts, original letters deed Titanic memorabilia, which he had concentrated during his life and used come within reach of write A Night to Remember. MacQuitty also donated items from his let loose collection of material related to blue blood the gentry film. Items from the collection more on display at the museum take precedence can be accessed by researchers.

References

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