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and his actual best work. A clue may be found in his editing of the
anthology: he confines himself to books or essays republished in
books, so practically nothing of his vast journalistic output appears .
But for most of his life Koestler has been a journalist, in Zionist,
Communist, and anti-Communist phases, still an occasional re–
viewer, since the middle 1940s able to choose his journals and write
thoughtful feature articles rather than commissioned stories , but
nonetheless a journalist, reporter, professional writer, in the best
senses through and through . This editing out of examples of early
routine journalism may simply be because this anthOlogy is, after
all, meant to show his writing at its best. But then its chronological,
quasi-autobiographic appearance is publicly misleading, perhaps
even self-deceptive. I would like to see examples of how he did write
as an Ullstein journalist and then as a party hack - not to demean
him, but simply because his life was so interesting. And he may
underestimate the reporter's craft, as if it diminishes the thinker's
status.
His prewar books told in sturdy prose fascinating stories about
his own adventures . When he comes to write in English, it is a work–
manlike , even at times lively, prose, occasionally even florid, but
certainly with little of the vivid feeling for a new language shown by
Conrad or the sharp simplicity of Orwell's use of his native tongue.
Personally, I don't find much difference between his own first
writing in English and the earlier translations of his German or
French (not Hungarian of course): it is almost as if he modelled his
prose on his last translator. Before the war , then , he wrote well
about his own experiences and matters arising from them–
especially well about extreme psychological states; but he had also
written , though no examples here, with some authority on scientific
matters as the science correspondent of the biggest German news–
paper chain in the 1920s. So when he returns to write about science,
though now in books and on themes of his own choosing, he is specu–
lative, most certainly, but not amateur or eccentric; and if he is
selective in his use of evidence, he is a good reporter of what
"challenging" research and theories he reads : he can both understand
and popularize scientific literature . Thus, there is both more
continuity in his writing than first appears to be the case or than he is
prepared to acknowledge .
Add to this the fact that his novels have all dealt well with the
character and ideological contradictions of a central hero or anti–
hero, as well as with extreme situations, but they have shown neither
psychological depth nor complexity in the interrelations of the char-
