Lifton's Journey

While there was so much to take away from Lifton as a writer, witness and a human being, I found myself rereading sections while performing the tasks of comprehending his life and analyzing the mechanics of his work. More and more I began to appreciate how seamless his memoir complemented not only the kind of person he has, but how his life's journey had been taken.

Sometimes when I read a particularly gifted writer, I begin to look for common constructions, stylistic tricks and other cues that help me to understand how the work sustains various emotions or is effective in maintaining interest. As I read Lifton, I began to notice the sparsity of physical detail in people, places and objects, but noticed I didn't seem to need them very much as a reader. This became more-and-more interesting to me as we traveled the world to meet some of the most influential people in the 20th century and also to spend time in some of the most iconic physical spaces as well.

It began to dawn on me that Lifton's journeys, his life, was more about the progression and evolution of the mind. The mind of victims, aggressors, thinkers and radicals were the landscape that Lifton trades in with this memoir. The physicality of Munich, for instance, is described in passing. The atmosphere of Munich and the psychic effects of the history of National Socialism are described in great detail. How the city affected him and his family (particularly BJ) was fascinating. That Lifton would move almost completely internally during this memoir is amazing and completely appropriate (in retrospect, of course.)

For Lifton, life is a journey of the mind and I find that this is an inspirational way to begin a semester of takling a similar journey.