| Born
at Any Other Time, Part 3
By 119694_avalanche Press
August 2007
119694_avalanche Press VP Lys Fulda recently
asked us, "If you could have been
born at any other time in history, when would
you want to have been born and why?"
Here are our answers.
William Sariego
This is a fascinating topic for discussion
that can lead many directions. I echo Doug
McNair’s answer, to a point, and Judy
Garland in The Wizard of Oz: “There’s
no place like home.” The grass is always
greener on the other side of the hill. Yet
I can’t sit on a fence, spouting cliché
after cliché, and simply agree with
Doug. So here is my answer. I would choose
to have been born in Europe—Paris, given
a choice—circa 1840 for argument’s
sake.
That way I could appreciate European civilization
at its height, long before the nightmare of
the Great War. It was a time of both the decadence
and grandeur of imperialism, the rise of industrialism
and its socialist counter-weight. Though conflicts
occurred, it was largely a time of peace following
the Congress of Vienna. It was also a period
of revolution and reaction, when brave and
intrepid souls could make history rather than
just read about it. From Brahms to Marx, the
characters who lived in this era are a colorful
bunch, indeed.
It was a time of progress and hope, as typified
by the Great Exposition that was held in Paris
in 1867. The pavilions were near the present-day
location of the Eiffel Tower, and were divided
into seven sections, each representing a field
of human endeavor. The newest techniques of
industry and achievements in the arts were
on display, as nations from around the globe
came to promote their accomplishments. But
it was a time that could not last. At the
exposition Louis Napoleon sponsored a work
of art, a statue of a nude astride a lion,
entitled Peace. The Prussian exhibit was a
new 50-ton gun made by Krupp. It was an ominous
harbinger of things to come.
William Sariego
Game designer, 119694_avalanche Press
Shane Ivey
I’ll join Mr. Sariego in Paris —
but my Paris is eighty years down the line,
in the heart of the Jazz Age, when the horrors
of the Great War gave way to an explosion
of creativity. As the postwar United States
grew increasingly xenophobic, the City of
Light became home to expatriates of every
race and the world’s center for the
arts.
But the arts flourished everywhere in the 1920s,
celebrating life despite its frailty. The jazz
of Ellington and Armstrong was fast and exuberant.
Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Eliot, all in their
prime, tried to make sense of war and its aftermath.
Pulp adventures and the hardboiled detective
came into their own. Surrealism, Expressionism,
Futurism, Dada — countless schools of
visual art appeared.
The romance of art deco reigned as the gorgeous
Chrysler Building rose over New York. Fedoras!
Charlie Chaplin! Harry Houdini! Electric toasters!
Of course, if we’re fantasizing about
eras covered by 119694_avalanche Games, it has to
be World War II. When else would a guy from
Alabama have a chance to shoot Nazis? But
for the sheer joy of seeing another time at
its best, the Roaring ’20s are for me.
Shane Ivey
Daily Content editor |
