Boston Review, which
has been my refuge, my soapbox, and my part-time employer for the past 10
years, will publish next month an essay of mine on Arthur Koestler–or, more
precisely, an essay of mine on Michael Scammell's biography of Koestler, the
reading of which reignited my interest in the great Anglo-Hungarian polymath,
whom I revered during my youth. The Scammell bio has been widely reviewed–here,
by Christopher Hitchens–and none of the reviewers has failed to observe that
Koestler, who was as famous in his day as, oh I don't know, Hitchens is in his,
has been totally forgotten; well, that isn't quite true. Unknown by the
uneducated, yes, but no one halfway literate doesn't know Darkness at
Noon, Koestler's definitive apercu of
Stalinism; it stands alongside, or even slightly above, Orwell (who was
founding member, with Koestler, of an Orwell-Koestler mutual admiration
society). And reading Darkness naturally makes the reader want to sample other
products of the same pen, this leading to Koestler's other novels, among which
Arrival and Departure and The
Call Girls stand out; fine novels, but not
on the masterpiece level of Darkness
and his stunning two-volume autobiography, Arrow in the Blue and The Invisible Writing. And by all means dip into The Sleepwalkers, a typical Koestlerian take on the great astronomers
Tycho Brahé, Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo; he loved science, and ranged wide
in his writings on it, and deplored the "cold war" between science
and the humanities. As for that other cold war, the one between Communism and
the West, the likelihood of the latter's victory was greatly enhanced by two
men: Koestler and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
For more on the great Hun, check back at BR in a month or
so. And watch this space.
