“So what will happen to your consciousness [after you die]? *Your* consciousness, yours, not anyone else’s. Well, what are *you*? There’s the point. Let’s try to find out…However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity–in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now listen carefully. You in others–this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life–your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. …This will be you–the you that enters the future and becomes part of it.”

(Boris Pasternack, Dr. Zhivago)

All the discussion this week about Gene Wilder, his wholly unique talent, and his genuine compassion for those with whom he came in contact, has somewhat cushioned the blow of losing another human person who made this world a better place to be.

And when people pass away from us, I always recall the above quote by Boris Pasternack, which reminds us that none of us can truly disappear.  That the memory of our actions, our words, our creations, and our presence will outlive us in the memory of others.  So, bearing that thought in mind, I wanted to take a moment to add to the memory-making of Gene Wilder, in the hopes of holding on a little longer.

I never knew Gene Wilder.  I had the entirety of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory memorized, and coveted his jacket with a near-physical pain, but that was as close as I ever got.  However, I spent nearly two years living in London, and I spent a considerable amount of that time walking around the city with an audiobook, absorbing stories as I learned my way around my adopted home.  Of all the books I listened to in the course of that time, the one I remember most vividly was a short novel that Gene Wilder wrote in 2007 entitled My French Whore: A Love Story.

Set in the closing days of World War I, the book follows Paul Peachy, a first-generation American, Minneapolis railway employee and amateur actor, who decides to escape his lackluster life by enlisting in the American Army.  There, he meets other children of immigrants who are all eager to serve as American soldiers, and begins to dream of the adventures and escapades they’ll have in Europe.  War, however, is nothing like Peachy or his friends imagined, and it isn’t long at all before he is captured by the Germans.  With nothing left to lose, Peachy–who speaks fluent German–decides to impersonate the German Army’s most famous spy.  Because ‘Harry Stroller’ is more myth than man, the deception seems to work.  Peachy is treated to a hero’s welcome, wined, dined, and provided with anything he could wish for–including women.  And it is then that Annie Breton, a young and strikingly beautiful courtesan, comes into Peachy live, and changes everything.

Now, Gene Wilder was not an historian, and this book is not the kind of novel you read if you want to learn more and accurate facts about life during the First World War, or behind the lines.  What it is, though, is one of the most earnest and human books I have ever read.  Even at its silliest moments, this book is so conscious about the value of Peachy’s life, about the deep, lasting meaning that his relationships have on him, and the way that all our human interactions shape us indelibly, that is ended up being a truly powerful little book.

And it took a very special, insightful, and humane person to write a book that was so deeply focused on what it meant to be human, in such a simple, accessible, and infectiously charming manner.  It is Pasternak’s theory about the soul, told in a strikingly simple, but disarmingly honest way that I still carry with me.  And if Pasternak was right, then what a beautiful kind of immortality that is.

Gene Wilder wrote several historical novels, as well as a collection of short stories, and memoir, all of which are available at the Library, or through NOBLE.