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Never Leave Well Enough Alone

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Raymond Loewy's Never Leave Well Enough Alone occupies a place in my heart for two reasons:

1. Inspiration. When I read it as a high school student in 1951, he gave me permission to be creative to the best of my abilities, a startling concept for me at the time. None of my teachers did that; I doubt whether it ever occurred to them.

2. A backward look. Reading the new edition in 2011 brought back fond memories, of course: the kiss on the train; the melding of his ample ego and with a common touch and practical side; his lifelong fascination with boats and locomotives (always the little boy); his love of food, friends and the good life; his wide-ranging curiosity; his struggle to sell the then-new concept of industrial design to skeptical business executives. This, from an immigrant Frenchman turned enthusiastic American citizen. But most of all it was a backward look at the America I grew up in, an America that, sadly, in many respects, no longer exists. Even the projects he worked on that don't seem so admirable today, his super-successful Lucky Strike cigarette package, for instance, elicit nostalgia.

There's filler and puffery to be sure, along with some anecdotes that don't quite resonate today. Then there are thought-provoking sentences (pg. 375) like this one: "Should the human race decide not to annihilate itself for some cause - most righteous, no doubt - the second half of this century should be a fairly exciting one to live in." Well, it was an exciting fifty years. I know; I lived them. But the twenty-first century is here and we are actually flirting with annihilation in the form of global broiling, something Loewy never imagined. Will this be the price our progeny pay for the "progress" he loved (and we still do)? I wish he were around to comment.