Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual
Best known as the author of the classic "Darkness at Noon", Koestler was one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century, involved in and commenting on almost every political movement going. As young man, he was a committed Zionist and moved to Palestine; he was imprisoned and sentenced to death in Franco's Spain; escaped Occupied France; and, was a member of the Communist party for seven years, later becoming one of its fiercest critics with the publication of "Darkness at Noon". Without sentimentality, Scammell gives a full account of Koestler's turbulent private life: his drug use, manic depression, the frenetic womanizing that doomed his three marriages and led to an accusation of rape, and his startling suicide pact with his wife in 1983. This biography also gives a full account of the author's voluminous writings, making the case that the autobiographies and essays are fit to stand beside "Darkness at Noon" as works of lasting literary value.
4.5 out of 5 based on 11 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Biography, Society, Politics & Philosophy |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
720 |
| RRP |
£25.00 |
| Date of Publication |
February 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-0571138531 |
| Publisher |
Faber & Faber |
| |
Best known as the author of the classic "Darkness at Noon", Koestler was one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century, involved in and commenting on almost every political movement going. As young man, he was a committed Zionist and moved to Palestine; he was imprisoned and sentenced to death in Franco's Spain; escaped Occupied France; and, was a member of the Communist party for seven years, later becoming one of its fiercest critics with the publication of "Darkness at Noon". Without sentimentality, Scammell gives a full account of Koestler's turbulent private life: his drug use, manic depression, the frenetic womanizing that doomed his three marriages and led to an accusation of rape, and his startling suicide pact with his wife in 1983. This biography also gives a full account of the author's voluminous writings, making the case that the autobiographies and essays are fit to stand beside "Darkness at Noon" as works of lasting literary value.
Read an extract from the book on the New York Times website
Reviews
The New Statesman
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
"Excellent… Although this official biography has been long in gestation, it was worth the wait. But then it's hard to go wrong with Koestler. In terms of in-your-face plot-line and human drama, his character and story would be implausible in a novel."
18/02/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Dominic Sandbrook
"Koestler may have been a deeply flawed human being, Scammell concludes, but what mattered was that he was a great romantic idealist who made a “unique contribution” to our understanding of the modern age. For me, however, this splendidly researched biography tells a different story. Behaviour that would be contemptible in a builder is no less shocking in a writer; great moralists are not exempt from the standards that govern the lives of others."
23/02/2010
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The Sunday Telegraph
Noel Malcolm
"Powerful… if reactions to this book are all concentrated on that one point [the allegation he raped Michael Foot's wife, Jill Craigie] it will be a pity, as this is an immensely thorough biography which explores the whole range of Koestler’s achievements, from the invention of the Hebrew crossword to the abolition of the death penalty in Britain."
23/02/2010
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The Sunday Times
John Carey
"Magisterial… Scammell’s biography switches attention from Koestler’s ideas to his courage and dynamism, and his brilliance as a reporter. It highlights the autobiographical writing, identifying Scum of the Earth as a matchless eyewitness account of the fall of France and of the cowardice and perfidy of the French ruling class. Koestler’s generosity is given its proper due as well."
07/02/2010
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The Washington Post
Michael Dirda
"Readers looking for a terrific biography, as well as a gripping work of intellectual history, shouldn't miss this record of "the literary and political odyssey of a 20th-century skeptic." Every page is enthralling… Of course, one expects such excellence from the multiply gifted Michael Scammell"
21/01/2010
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The New York Times
Christopher Caldwell
"As a source of information, “Koestler,” the work of two decades, will never be surpassed. As an argument for the man’s importance, however, it must contend with the eccentricity of Koestler’s preoccupations and — although Scammell does not always seem to realize it — his vices."
24/12/2009
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The Literary Review
John Gray
"Exhaustively researched and often extremely illuminating… Scammell's is a determinedly sympathetic biography, but the Koestler that emerges much of the time is a monster of self-absorption, at times ridiculous (as when he stood on tiptoe at parties in order to seem taller) but more often thoroughly repellent. Yet Koestler remains irresistibly fascinating, and not only because he lived through some of the worst turmoil of the last century."
01/02/2010
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The Financial Times
DJ Taylor
"Diligently researched, efficiently contextualised and shrewdly unpicking the diaries of his second wife, Mamaine, Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual is, inevitably, a shade less intriguing when it gets beyond the dynamic sweep of the early years into the postwar engagements with science and parapsychology, but this is hardly Scammell’s fault. Even men of action, alas, have to settle down and live in flats in Kensington."
22/02/2010
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The New Yorker
Louis Menand
"“Koestler” seems a prodigy of research, in many languages, and a scrupulous piece of fair-minded advocacy… There are two difficulties. The first is simply the demands that the material places on narrative technique. Scammell is a clear writer, but he is not a dramatic one. Koestler was, preëminently, both — and that is the second difficulty. The best biographer of the first half, the adventurous half, of Koestler’s life is Koestler, which means that Scammell is often in the unhappy position of describing events that Koestler himself has already written about brilliantly and grippingly."
21/12/2009
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The Spectator
Paul Johnson
"Michael Scammell’s new life is an attempt to redress the balance, and restore to Koestler some of the moral integrity damaged by [David] Cesarani’s findings… There is a good deal that is new in the book, albeit nothing sensationally revealing. It is generally a good read, and while I do not think it succeeds in its main objective, it casts a lurid light on the ideological wars of those painful decades, the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Those interested in Koestler will have to read both books, and make up their own minds which gives the truer picture of the man."
10/02/2010
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The Times
John Sutherland
"Cesarani’s Koestler is a multiple rapist, intellectual opportunist, bad Jew and “wife-batterer”. Scammell offers a more favourable verdict. Which of them is right? Scammell, any fair-minded reader must say. But mud sticks, and Koestler’s image will never now be clean of it."
20/02/2010
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