In A Dark Time

When I was 12 years old and boarding at an English prep school in 1955, my mother gave me a book to read at night called The Seven Stars of Peace. It was “an anthology for the times,” first published in 1940, “selected and arranged” by Arthur Stanley, otherwise known as author of The Book of the Garden. “It is my hope,” Stanley wrote in the introduction, “that in the difficult days that lie ahead some help may be found in this little book. It has seemed worthwhile to suggest an atmosphere in which peace may be born and flourish…Walkers in darkness, we have need of light; and these Seven Stars can guide us in the right way.”

I first met Robert Lifton in 1981 at a theatre in New York City. His friend, the actor Harris Yulin, was performing opposite Susannah York in an off-Broadway production of “Hedda Gabler.” We went for a drink after the show. Robert knew that I was active in the campaign for nuclear disarmament in the UK, and, as we parted, gave me, somewhat shyly, a brown paper bag, which contained his book The Broken Connection. I read it on the plane ride home and was bowled over.

I was invited to give the Bronowski Memorial Lecture on BBC TV later that year and decided to use the opportunity to speak about the psychology of the nuclear arms race. Now, with Robert’s book, I had an entirely new line of argument. I centred my lecture on the phenomenon of “nuclearism,” borrowing freely from Robert’s ideas. The lecture created a political furor. The government demanded an explanation of the BBC’s “biased” broadcasting, and the Bronowski Lecture series was summarily cancelled. James Cameron, commenting in the Guardian, wrote that the lecture alone had “justified the invention of the television.” Robert must have had every reason to feel proud of the fall-out.

From then on, I had a friend in Robert, but I wouldn’t say I

Page 163

had a new “soul mate.” As we got to know each other better, we realized we would never be easy intellectual companions. I am too much of a scientific sceptic, or—as Robert would see it—a rationalist spoilsport. At bottom, he and I continue to have deep disagreements regarding what the world is made of. Through the years, I have been less than willing to give the benefit of the doubt to prophets of mysterian ideas, such as John Mack, the scientist of alien abduction, or Norman Mailer, the cabbalist. But this has never (well, hardly ever) mattered to our friendship, because what Robert and I recognized from the beginning as the bond between us is our common belief in the transformative power of human imagination—scientific, religious, poetical, and, yes, even nonsensical.

Back in 1982, we decided we wanted to put together our own “anthology for the times.” We assembled the material for In a Dark Time: Images for Survival through a flurry of mailed exchanges, each of us reaching into our rattlebags of memorable quotes for ever darker, funnier, nobler, more revealing commentaries on the human condition. Then I went to spend a week with Robert and his wife BJ (Betty Jean) at Wellfleet. We spread out all the bits of paper on Robert’s huge study table, and, as Stanley the gardener had done, we selected and arranged them, so as create a narrative of answering voices. The novelist John Fowles said of the result: “This is the most important book to be published for many a long year.”

What were Stanley’s seven stars? They were the virtues of knowledge, faith, brotherhood, joy, gentleness, liberty, and courage. I am glad to have come to know and love a man who embodies all of them.

Page 164