The Zealot [a book review]

I cannot recall a book title that was less well-shaped to its subject. Far from being a “skeptic,” Arthur Koestler was a man not merely convinced but actively enthused by practically any intellectual or political or mental scheme that came his way. When he was in the throes of an allegiance, he positively abhorred doubt, which he sometimes called “bellyaching.” If he was ever dubious about anything, one could say in his defense, it was at least about himself. He was periodically paralyzed by self-reproach and insecurity, and once wrote a defensive third-person preface to one of his later novels (The Age of Longing) in which he described its style as modeled on that of a certain “A. Koestler,” whose writing, “lacking in ornament and distinction, is easy to imitate.” The author himself was written off as “a much afflicted scribe of his time, greedy for pleasure, haunted by guilt, who enjoyed a short vogue and was then forgotten, like the rest of them.”

In fact, Koestler succeeded in achieving several things that transcended his own time and made him into what Danilo Kiš called the prototypical Central European intellectual. He was enabled to do them because he believed that the intellectual ought also to be a man of action. He took part in the antifascist struggles of the 1930s and ’40s first as a true-believing Communist and then as an ex-Communist, and out of this synthesis he generated at least one work of nonfiction (Spanish Testament) and one novel (Darkness at Noon), which between them helped redefine the essential struggle as the one against totalitarianism tout court. No other single individual, with the exception of George Orwell—upon whom Koestler had a marked influence—could claim as much. Second, he managed to register practically every phase, emotional and ideological, of diasporic engagement with Zionism. Third, he was able to demonstrate that an individual could make a difference in the battle of the behemoths that constituted the Cold War.

To be born Hungarian and Jewish and German-speaking is to start at a slightly odd angle to the world. For instance, Koestler was unusual in retaining what Michael Scammell calls “fond memories” of the 1919 Communist putsch in Hungary, a botched and bloody business that led many people to actually welcome the advent of the vengeful right as a deliverance. This right was organically hostile to Jewry, but not even that explains Koestler’s nostalgia for Béla Kun, which in any case makes an odd fit with his decision, as a refugee and student in Vienna, to join a nationalist dueling-and-drinking club that effectively molded young Jews into ersatz Germans. Once more his formation and evolution were against the traditional grain: most European Jews were drawn to Palestine by labor and socialist groups, but when Koestler set off for the Holy Land he did so as a consecrated follower of Vladimir Jabotinsky and the so-called Revisionists. Parlaying his fierce journalism from the Middle East into a job with a German newspaper syndicate in Berlin, Koestler was able to interview Einstein and begin a lifelong amateur engagement with science, while keeping up a keen interest in the subject of eugenics: a field that (in 1930s Germany, of all times and all places) he regarded as promising.

The word one might choose to describe this riot of enthusiasms and contradictions would be promiscuous. It would certainly sit very well with Koestler’s private life, which was a hectic, alarming, and sometimes violent blend of alcoholism and satyriasis. Scammell holds retrospective psychology to a minimum but cannot escape noticing Koestler’s flight from an overprotective mother or his keen awareness of his short stature. We have Koestler’s own word for it—in Arrow in the Blue, which I think is the best of his volumes of memoirs—that he habitually felt awkward and uneasy and sometimes an impostor. This book provides persuasive evidence of acute manic depression, combated in one way by sex and booze and in another by devotion to a series of causes. Otto Katz once said to him, “We all have inferiority complexes of various sizes, but yours isn’t a complex—it’s a cathedral.” Koestler liked this remark so much that he included it in his autobiography, thus attaining the status of one who could actually brag about his inferiority complex as if size mattered.

It was often believed in those days that absorption into the historic movement of the working class was the cure for the angst of the petit bourgeois and the deracinated intellectual. This could help explain the utterness of Koestler’s surrender to Communism. Not even a visit to the famine-racked U.S.S.R.—where he traveled around with a completely credulous Langston Hughes—was enough to unpersuade him. He set off for Spain and the civil war as a dedicated agent of the Comintern, and if the Spanish Fascists who arrested him had guessed his true identity, they would have shot him out of hand. Had they done so, they would have unknowingly dealt anticommunism a frightful blow. Koestler’s experience of Franco’s cells in Málaga, with victims dragged to execution almost every night, helped furnish the stark raw material for Darkness at Noon: certainly the best jail book since Victor Serge’s Men in Prison and almost as influential in combating Stalinism as Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Koestler’s decision to abandon Communism almost as soon as he had been freed from Spain—because of the hysterical faking of the Moscow purge trials in 1938—was expressed in such brilliantly diagnostic and dialectical terms that it bears quoting:

It is a logical contradiction when with uncanny regularity the leadership sees itself obliged to undertake more and more bloody operations within the movement, and in the same breath insists that the movement is healthy. Such an accumulation of grave surgical interventions points with much greater likelihood to the existence of a much more serious illness.

To say that Koestler’s zeal replicated itself in the anticommunist cause would be to say the least of it. Scammell takes us once again through the story of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the CIA, but spends time illustrating what few people understand even now: the CIA’s hold on the financing of intellectual warfare was actually used as a brake on volunteers like Koestler, who were regarded as too vitriolically anti-Soviet and temperamentally hostile to compromise.

Having temporarily abandoned Zionism for Communism, he resumed his engagement by covering (and participating in) the violent birth of Israel, initially taking the side of the Menachem Begin ultranationalists but eventually becoming sickened by the violence of the Zionist right and finally worrying whether there should be a Jewish state at all. Scammell is not quite in his depth here: he conflates the Stern gang and the Irgun and gives superficial treatment (as he also does, bizarrely, to Koestler’s part in producing The God That Failed) to a subsequent book, The Thirteenth Tribe. In this, his last semi-serious work, Koestler suggested that Ashkenazi Jews were actually descended from the lost people of Khazaria, who before vanishing from the northern Caucasus a thousand years ago had somehow opted to Judaize themselves. One implication of that theory was that no authentic Ashkenazi Jewish tie to Palestine could ever be established. “Arthur just rather enjoys betraying his former friends,”I remember Patricia Cockburn snorting when this effort was published in the 1970s.

That might have been unfair—she remembered how her husband, Claud, had sweated to get Koestler out of jail in Spain, only to be rewarded with apostasy—but in his last two decades Koestler abandoned every kind of scruple and objectivity and became successively bewitched by “theories” of levitation, ESP, telepathy, and UFOs. He was enthralled by Timothy Leary and played for a sucker by the paranormal spoon-bender Uri Geller. The sleep of his reason did not even bring forth monsters: poor Koestler simply gave a fair wind and his once-valued imprimatur to a succession of pathetic quacks and mountebanks.

In a noble if melodramatic way, Koestler had once held a sort of dress rehearsal for suicide with Walter Benjamin, as both contemplated being taken alive by the Gestapo. (He kept the pills Benjamin gave him, while the latter swallowed his on the Spanish border a few days later.) By comparison, his own suicide in 1983 was an affair very much lacking in grandeur. His mind and his body were certainly both giving way, but he seems to have allowed or perhaps encouraged his healthy wife, Cynthia, to join him in the extinction. An earlier study by David Cesarani was lurid to the point of sensationalism about Koestler’s callousness toward his wives and other women (to say nothing of other people’s wives). It has been plausibly alleged that in his compulsive seductions—of Simone de Beauvoir, for one—he did not always stop quite short of physical coercion. Scammell does his best to plead extenuation here, but is obviously uncomfortable. Just as many of the people who believe in numinous coincidence and supernatural intervention are secretly hoping to prove that it is they themselves who are the pet of the universe, so many of those who overcompensate for inferiority are possessed of titanic egos and regard other people as necessary but incidental. At least this case is a tragic one when considered as a life story, because it shows us what a noble mind was there o’erthrown.
Click here to find out more!
The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/hitchens-koestler

music: Pavement “Wowee Zowee”

Carol wrote this Christ Mass letter today to go with Christ Mass cards—

I am at it early this year given the fact I did not send out any cards or letters last year and really don’t want to lose track of you and our friendship!
This past year Caleb Jon-the oldest of the three-was married on July 17 to Emily Caskey in Lapeer, Mich. They are continuing on in Boston where Caleb is finishing his PhD at Boston College and Emily (who hopes to go to nursing school) works in the nursing department there. It was a wonderful time together and is great having the family expand!
Josiah is in his fourth year teaching at Myamurrah High School in Gallup, NM. He’s doing some work with AP history classes and is expanding on his responsibilities with out of class activities. I am amazed the scope of challenges educators face today and all of you teachers out there have my utmost respect!
Bethany has taught first grade at Rehoboth Christian School in Rehoboth, NM. for two years now.She is about 5 minutes away from Josiah which is great for both of them. (And the momma as well!) She is to be married June 26, 2010 here in Holland to Andy Lynch-a man she met by way of his sister who lives at Rehoboth. Andy is an engineer presently employed in Phoenix, Az. and formerly from Grand Rapids, Mich. He was a year ahead of her at Calvin College but they did not know each other at that time. So we are back in wedding mode anticipating another wonderful event this summer!
I promise a picture with next years Christmas letter!
I am doing 12 hour night shifts at Holland Hospital as a Rapid Response nurse. It’s a lot of mentoring new nurses as well as covering emergencies on the floors and helping out in ED and the ICU. I’ve gotten pretty accomplished at IV starting in the process! It’s always an adventure there and I like not knowing what’s going to happen next. Outside of work there is always Mom in the nursing home to stay caught up on as well as the details of running a household. I always thought things would get easier when the kids were on their own but find the advancing years more of a challenge mentally and physically! It’s all good though as the grace of God truly keeps me going in His strength living one day at a time.
Jonny is basically home spending his time reading and writing in his private diary and his four online blogs. He lost his job 2 1/2 years ago and mainly given the dismal Michigan economy has not been subsequently employed. He takes Rudy on walks and goes downtown for mochas at least once a week. When he is downtown he likes to visit a local record shop and a used bookstore. Jonny enjoys listening to indie music and collecting books for his large book collection.
We hope you have a peaceful holiday season to close out 2009 and look forward to hearing about how you are doing!

The tender love a father has
For all his children dear,
Such love the Lord bestows on them
Who worship Him in fear.

The Lord remembers we are dust,
And all our frailty knows;
Man’s days are like the tender grass,
And as the flower he grows.

The flower is withered by the wind
That smites with blighting breath;
So man is quickly swept away
Before the blast of death.

Unchanging is the love of God,
From age to age the same,
Displayed to all who do His will
And reverence His Name.

Those who His gracious covenant keep
The Lord will ever bless;
Their children’s children shall rejoice
To see His righteousness.

Carol just left to visit her mother and go to a grocery store. I am down in the basement writing in my blogs.

It is another cold wet dark day. The weather has been plain ugly lately. Carol walked Rudy this morning so that is a chore I do not have to deal with.

I got out of bed this morning around 7:44 AM. Carol was up sitting in our living room reading the Bible.

This morning I finished reading in the New Testament the Gospel of Mark. Now it is on to the third gospel the Gospel of Luke.

Well there is not much else to report this morning. I spend a lot of time just sitting doing nothing these days. There is no reason to do anything these days. Was thinking this morning it is a miracle to have air to breath. If we did not have air we would die. Is there air in the world to come?

Last night I watched television from 7 o’clock PM till 11 o’clock PM. I had a hard time staying awake last night. Carol went to bed around 8:30 PM last night. There was no music last night or this morning. Carol works tonight and tomorrow night. Maybe tonight I will have a small private party?

Yesterday I read besides the Gospel of Mark these books when not falling asleep with pure boredom—

“The Augustan World: Life And Letters In Eighteenth-Century England” by A. R. Humphreys

“The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History” Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

The Apocryphal II Esdras chapter 13 “Then you saw him collecting a different company, a peaceful one. They are the ten tribes which were taken off into exile in the time of King Hoshea, whom Shalmaneser king of Assyria took prisoner. He deported them beyond the River, and they were taken away into a strange country.” II Esdras 13:39,40

I do not know what I will read today when I am not falling asleep? Time will go by. There is nothing we can do. All is a mystery. All we can do is keeping going and pray for grace.

“After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.” Mark 16:19,20

music: Pavement “Wowee Zowee” Sordid Sentinels Edition

I am having a hard time waking up this morning. Maybe I feel so tired in the morning because I am still feeling effects of the drugs I take at night to help me sleep? I should take a long walk this morning instead of sitting feeling wasted. Carol took Rudy for a walk this morning around our neighborhood.

I have no plans for the day. Carol has been cleaning this morning. My wife is always doing something. My goal is life is not to do anything. I want only to do the will of God.

I got up this morning around 6:55 AM. Carol got up around 6 o’clock AM this morning. She asked me this morning if I wanted to listen to music and I said No. I was too tired to listen to music. I must be getting old. How many men would say No to music? Maybe tonight we can listen to music?

Carol made a pot of oatmeal for breakfast. I messed with my lap top this morning and read my Bible.

Last night I read my books on the life of Samuel Johnson and watched television. Before going to sleep last night I read “Visions of Cody” by Jack Kerouac. So existence keeps speeding along.

I will close to wander my cell. Carol took our bedding to a local laundry mat and should be home anytime. Carol is cleaning our bedroom. She hates dust. I find delight in seeing existence covered with a layer of dust. Everything around us is in a state of decay.

“At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.” Mark 13:26,27

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! You do not know when that time will come. It is like a man going away: He leaves his house in charge of his servants, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back-whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” Mark 13:32-37

music: Sunset Rubdown “Dragonslayer”

spending binge

Nicolas Cage’s Former Business Manager Files Counter Suit, Claims Actor Went ‘On A Spending Binge Of Epic Proportions’

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — A former business manager for Nicolas Cage has filed a cross complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court claiming the actor was already deeply in debt when he was hired by the star in 2001.

As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, last month Cage filed suit against Samuel J. Levin, whom he claimed in court papers was an “incompetent business manager,” and whom he said sent the star, “down a path toward financial ruin.”

But in his cross complaint, filed late last week, Levin claims that when he was hired by Cage in 2001, the actor had already, “squandered tens of millions of dollars he had earned as a movie star, he was deeply in debt, and he owed millions of dollars in accrued but unpaid income taxes, with no funds available to pay the debut.”

Levin claims in his court filing that from the start of the two men’s “Business Management Agreement,” Cage “knew about his perilous financial situation and he knew he was behind on paying his taxes.”

The business manager claims he “warned” Cage that in order to “maintain his lavish lifestyle,” he needed to earn $30,000,000 a year.

In fact, Levin said the two came up with an agreement at the start of their business relationship.

Among the “objectives” Levin claimed the men agreed to were:

Reduce Cage’s spending and use his “assets and earnings to pay off his debts and eliminate the tax arrearage.”

Accumulate a “cushion” of at least $10,000,000, but preferably $20,000,000, for Cage’s financial security purposes and to “alleviate the financial pressure to take film roles that might be detrimental to his career.”

Levin said after agreeing, he sold off the actor’s $1.6 million comic book collection and more than “a dozen of his automobiles.”

But the business manager claims that after Cage had “a string of hit films,” his increased earnings saw the actor abandon “the economic conservatism” he had agreed to.

Levin claims Cage went bought new cars to replace the ones he sold and “set off on a spending binge of epic proportions.”

By July 2008, Levin claims, Cage owned:

15 palatial homes around the world

4 yachts (one for the following locations: Caribbean, Mediterranean, Newport Beach and Rhode Island)

1 island in the Bahamas

1 Gulfstream jet

Millions in jewelry and art

Levin claims he “implored” the actor to stop buying property and spending, but he “rejected this advice and continued his compulsive spending.

Levin claims the actor then bought more including

3 more homes worth more than $33,000,000

22 automobiles (including 9 Rolls Royces)

12 expensive jewelry pieces

47 artwork and exotic item purchases.

Levin claims as time went on, his advice was ignored and “rebuked.”

“The pinnacle of [Cage's] spending spree came with his quixotic acquisition of Midford Castle in England and Schloss Neidstein Castle in Bavaria,” Levin claims in the cross complaint.

The business manager claims he was eventually “terminated” and the actor hired a Certified Public Accountant to take over the account, an account which brought Levin back on board on an “hourly basis” until October 13, 2009, when Levin filed the actor’s 2008 tax returns. A short while later, Cage filed the original suit against Levin.

Just last week, Cage lost two of his New Orleans homes due to foreclosure auction and the IRS has claimed the actor currently owes over $6 million back taxes.

As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, Cage claims he is having to divest himself of a host of assets because of “Levin’s incompetence, misrepresentations and recklessness.”

He further asserted in his lawsuit that Levin paid himself “millions of dollars” while putting Cage’s money into “risky” and “highly speculative” investments, and that he also allegedly failed to “timely pay taxes.”

“Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”” Mark 10:23-25

music: Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew “Spirit If. . .”

Take the world, but give me Jesus

Take the world, but give me Jesus,
All its joys are but a name;
But His love abideth ever,
Through eternal years the same.

Refrain

Oh, the height and depth of mercy!
Oh, the length and breadth of love!
Oh, the fullness of redemption,
Pledge of endless life above!

Take the world, but give me Jesus,
Sweetest comfort of my soul;
With my Savior watching o’er me,
I can sing though billows roll.

Refrain

Take the world, but give me Jesus,
Let me view His constant smile;
Then throughout my pilgrim journey
Light will cheer me all the while.

Refrain

Take the world, but give me Jesus.
In His cross my trust shall be,
Till, with clearer, brighter vision,
Face to face my Lord I see.

Refrain

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.” 2 Peter 3:11-13

It is now dark outside and it is suppose to rain today and tomorrow. Last year at this time it was snowing.

I have not read anything this morning. I have been carrying around a book titled “Visions of Cody” by Jack Kerouac. I feel out of it this morning. There is nothing heavy on my mind this morning.

I should try to read The Gospel of Mark today. Soon it will be 12 o’clock Noon. Time keeps flowing by.

Well I will close pace back and forth in my cage.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth has passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” Rev. 21:1,2

music: Brendan Canning “Something For All Of Us. . .”

I just got back from taking Rudy for a walk at Van Raalte Farm. It is a cold cloudy morning here by Lake Michigan.

I am going to go to our local public library around 11 o’clock AM to buy a used book I saw yesterday in their used book room. Yesterday I saw a used paperback edition of Jack Kerouac’s book “The Visions of Cody”. I already have this book by Kerouac, but I am buying this edition for its book cover. (plus it is only a $1.50)

I need to read soon either Jack Kerouac or St. John of the Cross. I need to keep myself balanced. I need to keep my freak flag flying before I am destroyed.

I do not know what I will do the rest of the day? It is too early to have a party.

This morning I read for devotions a book titled “The Labyrinth Of Solitude And Other Writings” by Octavio Paz [Winner of the 1990 Noble Prize for Literature].

Last night before watching TV I read some of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament. I recommend this book for family devotions “Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark” by Rikki E. Watts.

I need to call this morning Jude 3 a local Christian bookstore to see if they had a small book titled “Liturgy & Worship Pocket Dictionary” by Brett Scott Provance.

Well I will close to feel a shadow of dread breathing down my neck.

music: Swans “Forever Burned”

I got up this morning around 7:44 AM. It is a cold late autumn morning. Last year around this time it was snowing here in West Michigan. I wonder when it is going to snow? We will have a white Thanksgiving Day?

I have no plans for the day. I should give Rudy a bath. Carol is home from work. I will close to visit with her before she goes to bed for the day.

“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” 1 Thess. 5:23,24

music: Pelican “What We All Come To Need”