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Book Description
From award-winning author Michael Scammell comes the first authorized biography of Arthur Koestler.
Product Description
Best known as the author of the classic Darkness at Noon, Koestler was one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals, involved in and commenting on almost every political movement of the twentieth century. 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. Koestler 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. Michael Scammell creates an indelible portrait of this brilliant, unpredictable, and talented writer, once memorably described as "one third blackguard, one third lunatic, and one third genius."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
If you have time to read only one book about Arthur Koestler, read this one. There are at least two other biographies:- one by Iain Hamilton written while Koestler was still alive - science-blind and very incomplete; and one by David Cesarani, hostile, unmasking, and almost as science-blind as Hamilton's. Michael Scammell has written a marvellous critical biography. He has been thorough. He pays attention to all aspects of Koestler's life and work. He writes beautifully. He is aware of Koestler's faults without this leading him into downright hostility. And he does justice to the extraordinary complexity of this unique and brilliant man.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Previous biographical efforts on Koestler have been under researched. Scammell makes up for this in spades: 571 pages plus 79 pages of notes. He has had access to private diaries, correspondence and even declassified official documents from several countries. He describes, sometimes at tedious but necessary length, K's complicated private life, his depression, alcoholism and serial womanising, but there are many arresting details. The title of "Darkness at Noon" was taken from the Book of Job, not Milton's Samson Agonistes and was chosen withou K's knowledge by the English translator in preference to the original title "The Vicious Circle". Sometimes comic - his publisher sent cigarettes to K when he was in Pentonville Prison as an undesirable alien, saying he would deduct the costs from K's royalties. Or the interrogator's report on his arrival in Britain "K is almost certainly a Jew but in view of possible repercussions from the News Chronicle, the question was not put". Read this book to find out on page 212 what K and Dylan Thomas did to Michael Foot's copy of "Darkness at Noon". Though K wrote two autobiographies, Scammell shows what he left out, which was quite a lot. His analysis of the relationship between K's personal experiences and his fiction is masterly.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
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Where other biographies of Koestler, including his own (Arrow in the Blue: The First Volume of an Autobiography - 1905-31) deal strictly with parts of the man's life and creation and are in a sense incomplete, Scammell's is a work of most thorough research and it finally brings it all together, warts as well the touches of genious that characterised one of the 20th century's most notorious intellectuals.
I think everyone who has read and been impressed by Koestler's work will benefit greatly from this biography - it will put so many things in context, including his unbelievable breadth of scientific understanding, his relatively peerless interdisciplinarity, as well as his excellent intuitive / insiders' understanding of the subject matters of both his fiction and non fiction work. If you marvel how the same individual could discuss the finer points of Lamarckism in The Case of the Midwife Toad and write probably the most inspired critique of communist trials in Darkness at Noon, be an authority on the process of creativity (The Act of Creation (Arkana)) and describe a scientific conference to a T in Call Girls, this biography is likely to provide pretty much all the answers.
While being much less critical of Koestler than some of his earlier biographers and leaving out much less than Koestler himself, Scammell by no means acts as an apologist or idolator. A relatively thorough examination of Koestler's youth and adolescence is made to look for cause but all his later foibles from the alcoholism, womanising, shameless self promotion and opportunism are apparent. At the same time one can much better understand why Koestler has practically disappeared from circulation and public awareness in Thacherite Britain and after the 1980s more generally. The whole concept of a reneissance man, one who has tried and championed many a cause but who had the intellectual integrity to admit to it, when the causes turned sour or disappointing did not mix well with the guru obsessed, one truth soundbite no attention span society that followed on the heels of his self-administered demise.
This biography is a worthy send off and one could only hope that it will arouse some more interest, and hopefully the odd reprint of Koestler's harder to get work - both would be needed as well as appreciated.
I think everyone who has read and been impressed by Koestler's work will benefit greatly from this biography - it will put so many things in context, including his unbelievable breadth of scientific understanding, his relatively peerless interdisciplinarity, as well as his excellent intuitive / insiders' understanding of the subject matters of both his fiction and non fiction work. If you marvel how the same individual could discuss the finer points of Lamarckism in The Case of the Midwife Toad and write probably the most inspired critique of communist trials in Darkness at Noon, be an authority on the process of creativity (The Act of Creation (Arkana)) and describe a scientific conference to a T in Call Girls, this biography is likely to provide pretty much all the answers.
While being much less critical of Koestler than some of his earlier biographers and leaving out much less than Koestler himself, Scammell by no means acts as an apologist or idolator. A relatively thorough examination of Koestler's youth and adolescence is made to look for cause but all his later foibles from the alcoholism, womanising, shameless self promotion and opportunism are apparent. At the same time one can much better understand why Koestler has practically disappeared from circulation and public awareness in Thacherite Britain and after the 1980s more generally. The whole concept of a reneissance man, one who has tried and championed many a cause but who had the intellectual integrity to admit to it, when the causes turned sour or disappointing did not mix well with the guru obsessed, one truth soundbite no attention span society that followed on the heels of his self-administered demise.
This biography is a worthy send off and one could only hope that it will arouse some more interest, and hopefully the odd reprint of Koestler's harder to get work - both would be needed as well as appreciated.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A PROVOCATIVE AND CONTROVERSIAL AUTHOR
Michael Scammell's voluminous Koestler-biography is a tour de force of research into the life of an extraordinary man and his lifetime (1905-1983). Read more
Published 7 months ago by Leif Asbjørnsen
The Essential Koestler
There are few things I like better than a door-stop of a biography and Michael Scammell's biography of Arthur Koestler is just the thing. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Brim
Good in-depth biography
An extensive biography - and if you like Koestler's books you will find interestering information to fuel your imagination. Read more
Published 12 months ago by jakob
Thank you Michael Scammell
I have been an ardent admirer of Koestler's ideas and writings for 25 yeards now. As you can guess, I was rather shocked when I read David Cesarani's biography of Koestler ("The... Read more
Published on 23 April 2010 by Edwin Camerlynck
biography of Arthur Koestler
I found this an excellent biography. The man led an incredibly full life, but every aspect of it - familial, intellectual, artistic, literary, political and amorous (there's a lot... Read more
Published on 18 April 2010 by Christopher R. Cruise
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