Making A Monkey Out Of Darwin
Reviewing, in the NYRB, a new biography of Arthur Koestler, Anne Applebaum quotes her
favorite Koestler moment—in a book full of amazing Koestler moments—is Michael Scammell’s description of an evening in 1946, during which Koestler and his then girlfriend (and later wife) Mamaine Paget went out drinking with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Camus’s wife, Francine.
Needless to say, the evening was full of drunken attention-whoring, in the postwar French style. So they were overwrought; so what?
So, intellectuals don’t behave that way anymore, is Applebaum’s brilliant point:
Leaving aside its entertainment value, that particular passage raises some interesting questions. We are not so many years removed from 1946, in the grand scheme of things. Yet much has changed since then, starting with the rules of acceptable public behavior. It is simply not possible to imagine any three prominent contemporary American public intellectuals—say, Malcolm Gladwell, Niall Ferguson, and David Brooks—indulging in a night on the town such as that one[.]
I think I just puked in my mouth. The first is a glib popularizer at best, the second a garden-variety Tory historian (Thatcherite division) who happens to be both telegenic and have at his command a legion of grad student researchers, the third is a fucking idiot. Finally, the only thing “intellectual” about them is their gift for PR; unlike the 1946 crowd, who were intellectuals in the true and traditional sense of the word, none of these propagandists have made anything close to resembling art, by which I mean here, something brilliant.
But then they are careerists. Or, to be admittedly 1940’s about it, they haven’t really lived. Apparently, alcoholism and dramatics — not to mention the ability to write well, and to write fiction at all — has been educated out of them, as Applebaum, after making some excellent points about Koestler’s sexually predatory nature, approvingly notes:
Nor are the rules of public behavior the only things that have changed. The professionalization of literary and intellectual life was underway even in Koestler’s lifetime, and he chafed against it. He disliked the lecture circuit and never had any real interest in teaching. He had very little time for universities in general.
In other words, Koestler didn’t want to be a hack, a fear and loathing Anne Applebaum and her friends do not share. Although many or even most real intellectuals teach nowadays, they do so because they have to, not because they want to.* And they have to largely because of the monopoly people like Applebaum have on the gigs in the traditional fora in which such intellectuals made a living: print media.
He also refused to be categorized as a simple “novelist” or “journalist,” and in the latter part of his career wrote books about science, philosophy, history, and psychology. He understood the term “intellectual” in a much broader sense than we do today, and felt comfortable ranging over a huge number of fields in which he had no professional expertise whatsoever. This approach to the life of the mind, perfectly acceptable in the Vienna of Koestler’s youth, simply looks amateurish from the perspective of the present.
Right; to be a fox is “amateurish.” But to be a hedgehog is to be a real professional, a real intellectual, a real EXPERT, before whom all must bow. Yes, although Koestler, it’s true, did veer often into crackpot territory, especially in his later years, he — a true intellectual — at least made even that shit seem interesting**. Can you imagine how awful Applebaum would read on, I dunno, pick some topic at random, legit or crackpot… the Mexican War? Jungian psychology? Artificial intelligence? The possibility of extraterrestrial life? For me she is damn near unreadable even in her putative area of expertise, the Soviet Union.
…speaking of which, is the Soviet Union such an uninteresting subject (all right, are Soviet Studies so degenerate now? the career of Condi Rice says yes) that Anne Applebaum has to be the NYRB’s resident Sovietologist? (Yes, Pulitzers should be considered meaningless. Tom Friedman, after all, has won multiple Pulitzers.) The NYRB, that is, that was the domain of Edmund Wilson, Mary McCarthy, Auden, Mailer, Sontag, et al.? And I’m not really even complaining about Applebaum’s point-of view here; the NYRB used to publish Robert Conquest***, whose politics are much like Applebaum’s, but who is much more artful, interesting, honest, intelligent anti-Commie (iow, a real intellectual) than Frau Farbissina will ever be. Though Applebaum’s byline has been soiling the pages of the NYRB for a few years now, I wonder if Barbara Epstein’s fairly recent death will mean that the Review will sink further into The Atlantic and Partisan Review territory; in keeping with the theme of the post, probably so.
Anyway, about her essay: Koestler is for her only good as an anti-Communist tool. More specifically, Darkness at Noon is great not because it is literature, but because it embarrassed fellow-travelers. Why this ancient history should matter to a West currently bereft of any communists Applebaum makes plain in a sort of worried-sigh way: now that the West’s economy has been ruined by the Wall Street criminals she loves, capitalists could be threatened with hanging but haven’t been; they better not be, the Gulags are sure to follow! I especially like her appreciation of Koestler’s lifelong habit of being rabidly pro- then just as rabidly anti- any movement he came across: Applebaum finds the inevitable product of the anti- position, when the movement was Communism, to be awesome (and it is, but little for that reason); but when Koestler went anti- on Zionism, well then that product must suck, must only be fodder for NeoNazi, KKK types, not because of its artistic and intellectual merits or lack thereof, but because that anti- position is inherently wicked.****
** — Apropos my retardedness, but also the more salient point: My introduction to Arthur Koestler was not the typical high school or college reading of Darkness at Noon, but a stupid childhood habit of reading rock star interviews. Sting used to cite Koestler quite a bit, in RE: Ghost in the Machine; looking back, it was X-Filesy, yes, but interesting and intelligent.
*** — And Solzhenitsyn. And Havel. Michnik and Milosz, too. Not to mention anti-Stalinist intellectuals who were still Communist (Applebaum acts as if this split never existed). But not, pointedly, pseudo-intellectual, quasi-McCarthyites like Irving Kristol, Applebaum’s true antecedent.
**** — I wouldn’t know; I haven’t read it (neither, I think, has Applebaum) or even a precis of it.
It is simply not possible to imagine any three prominent contemporary American public intellectuals—say, Malcolm Gladwell, Niall Ferguson, and David Brooks—indulging in a night on the town such as that one
Apparently, Annie Appleass hasn’t met Christopher Hitchens. Or Ann Althouse.
If you’re going to include David Brooks AND Niall Ferguson on a list like that, then you have to allow all people of that par-value stature on the list, which would certainly include Hitchens.
I can, with little effort, imagine Ferguson head-butting Brooks into unconsciousness. I will now sit at my desk with a blissful smile for several minutes.
Altho Appleass’ article does raise the interesting question: why are there no intellectuals in America anymore?
I can answer that, I think: intellectualism is seen as somehow dangerous, that to hold a thought and compare it to another thought and then somehow weigh them against each other using the wisdom you’ve gained over your lifetime is heretical and treasonous.
head-butting Brooks into unconsciousness.
How will anybody tell?
heretical and treasonous.
and eleitist
At least she picked some people who are able to formulate complete thoughts and sentences. I have seen where Palin has been described as an intellectual, which made me want to go get my gun that I don’t own and shoot myself.
How will anybody tell?
More drool, less spew.
Comparing David Brooks to Sartre and Camus?
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
He understood the term “intellectual” in a much broader sense than we do today, and felt comfortable ranging over a huge number of fields in which he had no professional expertise whatsoever. This approach to the life of the mind, perfectly acceptable in the Vienna of Koestler’s youth, simply looks amateurish from the perspective of the present.
portraying yourself as an expert in a field where you have no professional expertise doesn’t look amateurish. it IS amateurish. the definition of amateur is, basically, not a professional. let alone that a true intellectual should know his fucking limitations.
I’m no intellectual, just a retard; except that unlike Applebaum, I admit it.
Once upon a time, Mr Montalbon
Sorry. I didn’t believe you, but she REALLY DID compare Arthur Koestler, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir & Albert Camus to Malcolm Gladwell, Niall Ferguson, and David Brooks.
I don’t know what to say to that.
Ann Althouse gave me a dirty look when I ran into her at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom during a Bob Dylan concert in October. She later posted a bunch of photos she drunkenly took from behind a rainy windshield that evening as her party drove around the neighborhood. Good times.
Comparing David Brooks to Sartre and Camus?
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
No offense, but fack that – comparing Whiny Bobo to Koestler, a man who actually went off to a country he was forbidden to enter, to fight in a war because he actually had the courage of his convictions?
Annie should be very glad you can’t spit on someone through the Internet. (Though maybe there’s an iPhone app for that, I don’t know.)
I’m no intellectual, just a retard; except that unlike Applebaum, I admit it.
On behalf of all Retardo-Americans, I demand an apology.
On hedgehogs versus foxes and expertise: UC Berkeley psychologist Philip Tetlock’s “Expert Political Judgment” has a brilliant comparison of the accuracy of “hedgehog” personalities’ predictions about politics versus “fox” personalities’ predictions. Hedgehogs tended to have single big theories of everything, while foxes were intellectual and theoretical omnivores. Guess who did better? Foxes.
Hedgehogs, however, DID do a much better job of explaining why their failures shouldnt’ be counted against them. Their predictions ALMOST came true (Canada nearly dissolved into English- and French-speaking), or are just ABOUT to, or would have happened were it not for some unpredictable exogenous factor (who would have guessed that housing prices wouldn’t rise forever?). Or my favorite: it would have irresponsible not to make a certain prediction, despite contrary evidence. E.g., if I hadn’t predicted that Saddam had WMD and it turned out that he did, that would have been much worse for us than if he hadn’t. (Of the impact of my prediction on the Iraqi people and the long-term erosion of American geopolitical credibility, we shall not speak.)
Oh, cripes, I missed that – she was fucking reviewing a BIOGRAPHY of Koestler?
Did she even read the goddamn book? Did she just skip over all the Spanish Civil War stuff? Did she even bother to do the tiniest bit of research into someone she’s lauding? (Never mind – I know the answer to that one.)
Wow.
I mean, “public intellectual”, at least throw us a bone on the latter.
Thread-hopping and wev OT.
Big Andy is awake and spilling his vodka and Red Bull on the carpet.
I’m sorry, I was wrong – Koestler was in Spain, but not as a combatant:
Still – going off to a war zone in the first place is more than Bobo’s going to do.
Ferguson is Canadian. No matter how much he may hype for the U.S.A. Freedom Power Empire, we don’t want him. Let him cheerlead from the sidelines.
In his defense, though, this
happens to be both telegenic and have at his command a legion of grad student researchers
is pretty much the definition of a public intellectual/academic.
Big Andy is awake and spilling his vodka and Red Bull on the carpet.
Good, cause I was away from the toobz for a day and missed the SN blogasm. Hopefully he’ll go right back to it.
Isn’t the big personality difference between hedgehogs and foxes that when they confront one another hedgehogs hide while foxes try to eat them?
Still – going off to a war zone in the first place is more than Bobo’s going to do.
He works for the Ny Times, so same thing to Appleass.
Stop making fun of my prop-baby. You know that’s my Trigger. You betcha.
Isn’t Ferguson a Brit? Brooks is Canadian and Gladwell is Canadian-Brit.
Whatevs, they all live in America, they’re all in the public sphere, but only Ferguson is remotely intellectual although when in public he’s generally making an ass of himself.
I’d always kind of admired Applebaum, mostly on the strength of “Gulag.” But if she truly can’t tell the difference between Albert Camus and David Brooks, she’s a fool.
You know, though, now that I think of it, “war correspondent” has to be a lot more with the courage thing than soldier, really. I mean, you’re not there because you HAVE to be, for some duty to state. You’re there because you WANT to be. And even if you stay in someplace relatively safe like London or Baghdad or Barcelona or whereever and file reports from a hotel lobby, you’re still next door to shit blowing up, which is a lot closer than I ever want to get.
I suppose the only consolation for Bobo is knowing that if he ever did risk his ass and get caught, it’d be all “Ransom of Red Chief” and he’d be back in the States with a note of apology from the enemy within hours.
He works for the Ny Times, so same thing to Appleass.
I guess she’s working from the Hugh Hewitt “on the front lines” arguement.
Boy, yeah, I’m sure that endears them so much to correspondents in Kabul, Baghdad, and Lebanon.
There are no Americans named Malcom or Niall especially Niall, although quarterbacks are required to have obscure trust-fund sounding names. Applesauce needs to get out more. All my local public intellectuals are drunks. Except one. He took a boat load of acid in 1978 and hasn’t been the same.
“You know, though, now that I think of it, “war correspondent” has to be a lot more with the courage thing than soldier, really. I mean, you’re not there because you HAVE to be, for some duty to state. You’re there because you WANT to be. And even if you stay in someplace relatively safe like London or Baghdad or Barcelona or whereever and file reports from a hotel lobby, you’re still next door to shit blowing up, which is a lot closer than I ever want to get.”
Somewhat off-topic rant;
It’s been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time that soldiers alone get the credit for bravery and courage when diplomats, journalists, Peace Corps types, and hell even intelligence agents get little to no credit, ever, outside of their own communities.
It pisses me off even worse to compare the reactions of these communities to their public image. No one gets the same blind faith and sheer hero-worship from the American public that the military does, not even close, and yet not a day goes by when I don’t hear more incessant whining from military members that no one understands them and no one respects them and it’s a fucking atrocity because they’re the only ones out there dying for us.
By contrast, diplomats, journalists and Peace Corps types never get even an afterthought of respect or gratitude from the public. But the most remarkable thing is that in my experience, they don’t even ask for it. Unlike so many soldiers, they simply do their job and expect nothing more from it than professional satisfaction.
(Sorry if it sounds like I’m ripping on the military. I respect soldiers, I have quite a few in my own family. I’m just damn tired of them having a monopoly on that respect when so many others take the same risks with next to no training – and worse, thinking they’re the only ones entitled to it).
Chris,
I’d agree with you on some of what you posted but…
Diplomats put themselves in harm’s way. Journalists who cover war zones put themselve in harm’s way. Peace Corp types put themselves in harm’s way. They specifically volunteer for assignments in dangerous places.
Soldiers, particularly in the case of the reserves that were sent to Iraq, do not specifically volunteer for those things. Yes, it’s a risk that they get sent (and I know quite a few Afghan and Iraq vets who signed up for the college benefit, figuring the regular army would go in first) but they are reluctant arrivals, usually.
The rest of your post makes many valid points. I’d argue that diplomats get something back for the risk, and journalists too. But people like Red Cross and Peace Corps volunteers do not.
Let me just say this:
Fuck Havel. Fuck him with a big rubber dick and then fuck him again with Karel Kryl’s bones. One by one.
all right, are Soviet Studies so degenerate now? the career of Condi Rice says yes
AFAIT, most, if not all, Soviet Studies scholars are terrorism experts now.
Soldiers, particularly in the case of the reserves that were sent to Iraq, do not specifically volunteer for those things. Yes, it’s a risk that they get sent (and I know quite a few Afghan and Iraq vets who signed up for the college benefit, figuring the regular army would go in first) but they are reluctant arrivals, usually.
BUT… soldiers get weapons training and combat training, which correspondents and diplomats do not.
They’re not just putting themselves in harm’s way… they’re putting themselves there with no real idea (except maybe for someone like Robert Fisk) just HOW harmful it can be.And no skills in how to respond to harm that does occur.
And that’s courage.
Actor212,
Joining the military means, in effect, that you’re agreeing to go into a war zone if the service requires it of you. It may not be expected, but in effect, they did volunteer even if they didn’t know exactly where for.
But you’re right that they don’t have the same degree of choice in their assignments that diplomats and journalists, among others, do. And like I said, they have my full respect for that. I just wish the respect got spread around to some others as well.
I guess my point about soldiers is the same point I’d make about homebuyers who got caught in the mortgage collapse.
Yes, that was a risk that they took, but it had been so long since they, particularly the reservists, were called into action that they were complacent it wouldn’t happen.
None of that negates the fact that, uh oh, they’re there because they volunteered.
Or as Otter in Animal House put it: “You fucked up! You trusted us!”
Three American public intellectuals? She’s got a Hungarian and two Frenchman behaving one way, and she doesn’t think that a Canadian and a Scot would behave the same way. The only American here is David Brooks.
Not to mention anti-Stalinist intellectuals who were still Communist (Applebaum acts as if this split never existed).
Yep, you are not allowed to mention this fact, ever ever never never. People like: CLR James, Raya Dunavskaya, Cornelius Castoriadis, Edgar Morin, Henri Lefebvre, E.P. Thompson, Mike Davis, Guy Debord, Antonio Negri, Paul Mattick, Anton Pannekoek, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, etc. etc., do not and never did exist.
The only Communists are Stalinists. End of discussion.
One may speak of anti-Stalinist Communists, but only when they a.) later become neo-conservative tools (Kristol the Elder, Pod the Elder, Horowitz the Destroyah, etc.) or b.) talk about literature or religion (cf. the Walter Benjamin Industry, Adorno on music).
The only American here is David Brooks.
And he was born in Toronto. Holy crap, he’s like a month and a half older than my husband, he looks 5-10 years older. Brooks also acts older than my dad and my dad practically personifies “crotchety.”
“Not to mention anti-Stalinist intellectuals who were still Communist (Applebaum acts as if this split never existed).”
Or socialists who opposed communism – like George Orwell, who wrote against the Soviet system incessantly and, I believe, even cooperated with MI5 in rooting out members of the socialist movement who had ties to Moscow.
Or anti-socialists who were also anti-capitalist. Like Solzhenitsyn, the great Christian hope who was supposed to be the idol of the right wing, but turned out to actually be a Christian first and a political ideologue second, and was equally critical of the immorality of capitalist excess.
Nope – it’s a binary system, you either agree with Ayn Rand or you’re a lousy stinking commie.
Gladwell’s status as a popularizer ranks well below Carl Sagan (who deserves reverence despite his minor scientific contributions), but somewhere above Steven Levitt’s junk-science Freakanomics.
You wanna talk contemporary American intellectuals, start with Noam Chomsky.
I don’t know if astrophysicists can be considered “intellectuals,” but I’ve gone drinking with a number of prominent astronomers and once met a very drunk Nobel prize winning physicist.
First, it’s is awfully tough to imagine left-wing writer-philosophers who live in Paris drinking together. AND THEN THEY INVITE ANOTHER LEFT-WING WRITER TO COME ALONG!
Chomsky does not count as a Serious Thinker.
It’s not really possible to imagine David Brooks “indulging in a night on the town” that didn’t start at Applebee’s and end at TGI Friday’s.
Chomsky does not count as a Serious Drinker.
Fixed for accuracy.
It’s not really possible to imagine David Brooks “indulging in a night on the town” that didn’t start at Applebee’s and end at TGI Friday’s.
Depends on what the drink-o-the-day is at Ruby Tuesdays.
Although many or even most real intellectuals teach nowadays, they do so because they have to, not because they want to.*
You make some good points in your post, but the second part of your claim is bullshit, and obviously so. “Some intellectuals teach because they have to, not because they want to” would be accurate.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for Malcolm Gladwell, Niall Ferguson, or David Brooks to win a Nobel, let alone two among the three of them.
“On behalf of all Retardo-Americans, I demand an apology.”
On behalf of all Rahm-Americans, I demand an apology for the apology you demanded. Or I demand that you step outside and say that.
What Batocchio said. If you sincerely believe that being a “real” intellectual entails not wanting to teach, you’re not only retarded, but a fucking idiot.
It’s the triumph of kitch over substance. Ann Applebaumn the champion of kitch values.
(Sorry if it sounds like I’m ripping on the military. I respect soldiers, I have quite a few in my own family. I’m just damn tired of them having a monopoly on that respect when so many others take the same risks with next to no training – and worse, thinking they’re the only ones entitled to it).
That’s a mostly good point (not sure I agree that soldiers think they’re the only ones who should be honored). But I think it really has more to do with uncurious nature of the American public more than anything else; they just can’t really be bothered to think about people like aid-workers and don’t understand the motivations for doing that. What a soldier does seems to more obviously and openly benefit America so it’s better. But the accolades are pretty perfunctory as you can see with all the annual mattress sales we honor our fallen soldiers with.
How many physicists are employed by universities because they really want to teach frat boys? How many teach because they want access to a uni’s research facilities and teaching’s a necessary evil of that job? How many hisotrians teach because they love students; how many teach because they want good benefits but cant survive simply by publishing their work. How many English professors would rather be living from their novels or (lol) poetry rather than teaching snot-nosed freshmen to beware dangling participles?
Although Koestler was in Spain with the credentials of a war correspondent, he was actually there as a Communist agent, as the biography under discussion points out. The correspondent credentials were a cover. See also Louis Menand’s review in the New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/12/21/091221crat_atlarge_menand
Most English professors don’t write novels or poetry, so I’d guess the answer would be “very few.” Are you thinking of creative writing professors? They’re not the same thing.
Beyond that, nobody much likes teaching basic freshman classes. But a lot of people in academia like and care about teaching. It’s part of the deal, at least in the humanities and social sciences – you go into graduate school knowing that teaching is a big component of what you are being paid to do. Obviously, some academics don’t care for teaching. In the sciences, a lot of them get to mostly avoid teaching undergrads, anyway, if they’re good enough to get grants for research. In other fields, it can be kind of a love/hate thing, but it’s just nonsense to say that nobody in academia likes teaching or thinks it’s important.
Right, John, and I obviously don’t believe that; am sorry I gave the impression that I did.
But when you’re talking about Koestler-level intellectual, and that’s what I was thinking of on my original tangent, then, no, such people don’t like teaching though some do it (like Zizek) because they have to.
Couldn’t you already make that assessment based on (a) her marriage to a comically right-wing Polish asshole, and (b) her subsequent grovelling apologia for Roman Polanski, beloved hero of said right-wing Polish asshole?
Whoa. She came up with a list of modern “intellectuals” on which the biggest heavyweight by a country mile was *Niall Fergusson*? How do you do that? Ms Applebaum, I’ve always taken you for somebody of at least average intelligence – but if you rate David Brooks as an intellectual, you’ve set the bar under the fucking floor.
Sartre : Brooks :: Being : Nothingness
Interesting that the three “American public intellectuals” Apple Annie names are a Limey and two Canucks.
Then again, they’re not intellectuals either.