The Tortoise and the Hare Entry No. 10

The Happiest Man on Earth
By Eddie Jaku

I am blessed for having read the book. You can’t say that about every book you read. Nor can you say that about just a good read, so I guess I am saying much. Jaku wrote this when he was 100. He died when he was 101. Talk about being useful up to your last breath.

The author’s prose is so optimistic despite talking about the Holocaust that I cannot help compare it to Eat a Peach, which seemed undergirded by so much anger. I also thought about two memoirs I read earlier this year: In Order to Live and Tell Me Everything. No one really escapes suffering. It just has too many faces. 

Unlike so many Holocaust stories, this is just not about that horror but how to live after it. He says: “I know survivors who have never been fortunate enough to feel the freedom that comes from putting the burden of suffering down in order to be able to bear up their happiness.” We like to latch on even the tiniest grudge to feel a tad righteous. To move on from the face of pure evil, I imagine there to be such a wilful, deliberate putting down of an overwhelming, all-consuming burden, for how could he be the “Happiest Man on Earth?”

The Russians came to save the day then along with the Allied forces. They were indignant at the atrocities the Nazis committed. With the war they’re embroiled in now, it’s interesting to see how humans can always find a reason to legitimise their action, no matter which side of the trench they’re on. It seems just a matter of being at one side of history at one point in time.

The prose of the book is simple. The most compelling stories often are. I devoured this read. A hare read through and through.