COLUMNS

William Urban: 'Edge of Eternity'

William Urban
William Urban

Ken Follett is best known for his sprawling multi-generational novels about key moments in history. Usually he follows four families whose paths cross from time to time, each representing some important group in the era. This is, of course, a historian’s feast.

My grandmother introduced me to historical fiction. When I began teaching, I often included assigned readings such as “The Virginian” and “The Death of Artemio Cruz.” My hope was that students would pick up the reading habit as I had done.

Recently I finished listening to his “Century Trilogy,” the last novel being “Edge of Eternity”— a reference to the nuclear standoff from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union. These are decades that many Americans remember well. I was too young to fully understand the Berlin Airlift, but I heard about it later from my uncle, who had been an Associated Press correspondent in Germany. I was lucky to be able to spend a summer with him in DC. He had lots of stories! He also loved opera, good food, and conversation. He wrote all the US News stories about Watergate — he could hardly believe Nixon had gotten himself into that problem. He also supported civil rights, but was puzzled by King’s lack of concern that his phones were tapped.

The movement against segregation forms a major theme through the book. That I remembered well. I joined the civil rights protests at the University of Texas, where a segregated theater stood right opposite the main gate by the student center. Weekends were not dangerous, with enough picketers around to provide some mutual protection. On weeknights, however, the two or three of us could have easily been mugged. I was called a “N-lover” many times.

This did have an effect on my career. I did very well on the written test for the State Department foreign service. At the oral exam, the committee asked me what I thought about civil rights. No point in fudging —they would have found out — I told them that I thought it was wrong that some citizens could not patronize restaurants or stay in motels because of their race — that violated everything that America stood for. Their faces froze. After they consulted, they called me back in and suggested that I pursue another career, perhaps as a college professor. They were very nice about it, so I did.

Follett’s story got moving in earnest in the Cuban Missile crisis, his characters in Russia and the United States having become sufficiently important to witness the progress of the event personally. I followed it personally, too, but at a greater distance. I remember the one television set in the student center being watched by as many students as could get close enough to see the screen. All my friends in the reserves were called up, and when I went to Houston to watch Texas play Rice, there was a fly-over of Air Force transports that never seemed to stop, all supposedly heading for Florida. I believe that many circled back after turning over the Gulf of Mexico, but it was still very impressive.

Later we learned that the official story of cool deliberations at the highest level were very high-level Kennedy self-promotion, and that we were luckier than we knew in avoiding nuclear war — missiles had already been set up in Cuba and Fidel wanted to fire them! Che, whose face still occasionally adorns the tee-shirts of leftist idealists, was even more angry.

Next was the Berlin Wall, which I first crossed in 1964. (My wife, Jackie, beat me there, seeing it in 1963.) I joined a program sponsored by the Church of the Brethren, which was an excellent introduction to the crisis; several times we smuggled church music and religious books through Checkpoint Charlies. Once, when our program director was called in for a strip search, he handed me his coat, which was loaded with illegal literature. As the younger Bush said, when you’re young and stupid, you do stupid things.

As the Cold War cooled down, so too did the novel. There was Vietnam, of course. Then the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the shooting of Robert Kennedy. Here the author let the veil of political neutrality slip—he was an old-fashioned Kennedy liberal, almost a conservative in today’s terms, but still believed that all Republicans were evil. Okay, I thought, I’m used to that. One can still enjoy the book.

The fall of the Wall brought back memories of our having been there when Checkpoint Charlie was officially opened. The only sad faces belonged to the wives of Russian officers, and perhaps Putin, who was a KGB officer there at the time.

William Urban is the Lee L. Morgan Professor of History and International Studies at Monmouth College.