Starred Review. From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, Tacitus to Margaret Thatcher, this scintillating compendium of 110 new biographical essays plumbs the responsibilities of artists, intellectuals and political leaders. British critic James (
Visions Before Midnight) structures each entry as a brief life sketch followed by quotations that spark an appreciation, a condemnation or a tangent (a piece on filmmaker Terry Gilliam veers into a discussion of torturers' pleasure in their work). Sometimes, as in his salute to Tony Curtis's acting or his savage assault on bebop legend John Coltrane's penchant for "subjecting some helpless standard to ritual murder," James's purpose is just bravura opinionating. But most articles are linked by a defense of liberal humanism against totalitarianisms of the left and right—and ideologues who champion them. He lionizes prewar Vienna's martyred Jewish cafe intellectuals; castigates French apologists for communism—especially Sartre, who "could sound as if he was talking about everything while saying nothing"; and chides Borges for not noticing Argentina's descent into fascism. This theme can grow intrusive; even in an entry on children's author Beatrix Potter, he feels called upon to denounce Soviet children's books. But James's brilliantly aphoristic prose, full of aesthetic insights but careful not to let aesthetics obscure morality, makes for a delightful browse suffused with a potent message. Photos.
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Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
Intrigued by the excerpts running on Slate.com, I snapped this one up when it came out. It consists of capsule essays on a wide range of scholars, artists, writers, philosophers, political figures, and so on. The common thread running through the essays is a defense of the humanist impulse in the face of totalitarianism, and how this issue is perpetually relevant. The tone is a mournful one at times, as if the author feels this battle of ideas has been forgotten by succeeding generations. The figures represented run the gamut from Louis Armstrong to Wittgenstein, from Borges to Satie. There are also numerous lesser known figures like philologist Ernst Robert Curtius or polymath Egon Friedell, as well as villains (Hitler and Mao, among others). James's dismantling of Sartre is almost worth the price of admission itself, but perhaps the single best essay is on Sophie Scholl, a young member of the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany, who chose to die in solidarity with her friends, as a symbolic gesture of defiance. This essay is the only piece of writing (other than old love letters) that has ever made me tear up. James often goes on his own idiosyncratic tangents in the middle of a chapter, but this is one of the book's charms, like having a conversation with a learned and, at times, frustrating friend.
I was tempted to dock a star in my rating because of the unusually high level of typos. In all seriousness, I have never encountered a book with so many - It may border on an average of one typo per page. Norton, someone was asleep at the switch here. Despite this distraction, a wonderful read.
