Bernard Crick
KOESTLER'S KOESTLER
In
1942 George Orwell wrote about a new breed of writers
who were specifically "political writers ," men whose best writing was
to be found in that esthetically unfavored subject matter. Among
them he numbered Malraux, Borkenau, Silone, and his new friend
Arthur Koestler.
Koestler has been almost as difficult to come to terms with as
Orwell, even though, born only two years later, in 1905 , he is still
very much alive and has written copiously about himself and his
"career" - he is fond of the word
career.
Admiration for both men is
tinged with uncertainty as to quite what we are admiring; and some,
whose wounds still ache from old cuts inflicted by one or the other of
them, would deny their merit as writers at all, or call it grossly
inflated. Part of the difficulty of appraising Koestler is that he has
written so much and in a variety of forms on widely varying
subjects, most of which stir strong reactions . A bibliography lists
thirty published books.
Now Koestler seems to help us by providing a selection of his
own writings. What is it in fact? "An omnibus," he says, which the
Concise Oxford
tells him "is a volume containing several stories, plays,
etc . , by an author published at a low price to be within the reach of
all." That it is, a fine piece of publishing, incidentally, but in one
respect it is a curious omnibus, for it is not "the best of Koestler," a
selection of works as a whole , but rather heavily edited
abrid~ements
from all the thirty books. He has had to reduce 9000 pages to 700, so
to 7.5 percent of the total, he tells us with mock pedantry, obviously
and understandably pleased with his own professional skill with the
knife, even on himself.
This book must at least be his own view of his achievement,
especially as at first ·glance it includes something of everything:
Zionist, communist, anticommunist, philosopher, scientist,
pamphleteer, deep pessimist, profound optimist, unsatisfied Yogi
and frustrated commissar. Can we now judge whether he is a
bourgeois hedgehog or a natural aristocrat of foxes? Whether he
should be remembered and respected more for his philosophic and
scientific speculation of later years or for his earlier political
