Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth Ideology – that is what… gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good… in his own and others’ eyes From this point the roads go to the right… Read More The Gulag Archipelago: An Epic of True Evil
First posted December 18, 2016 Total responsibility in total solitude – is this not the very definition of our liberty? Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophers and writers of the 20th century. He lived through World War II first as a French prisoner of war, then as a professor of philosophy associated… Read More The Republic of Silence: Jean-Paul Sartre on the Aftermath of War and Occupation
To transform himself from imperial policeman to writer, Eric Blair set aside both his name and the trappings of respectability his family cherished. Orwell: The New Life; By D. J. Taylor Reviewed by Dominic Green George Orwell, the inventor of the Ministry of Love and Room 101 in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” was married for the second… Read More ‘Orwell’ Review: A Fresh Biography of Truth’s Champion
First posted December 23, 2013 Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot: Charlie Chaplin Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot: Groucho Marx My way of joking is to tell the… Read More Lewis Lapham on Mark Twain, laughter and ‘the world’s colossal humbug’
Erik Hmiel SOMETIME IN THE MID-1950s, the American philosopher Stanley Cavell, a new professor at the University of California, Berkeley, encountered an elderly colleague given over to resignation. The senior scholar, having recently retired from teaching, recalled to Cavell the moment when he realized the seeming limitations of his philosophical prowess. The occasion was the… Read More On Jonathan Strassfeld’s “Inventing Philosophy’s Other”
By Alexander Zinoviev, from Homo Sovieticus, a novel that was originally published in 1985 and is included in Boredom, an anthology that was published in January by M.I.T. Press and Whitechapel Gallery. Translated from the Russian by Charles Janson. Soviet people are trained to write Reports about everything. It is an indispensable element of the Communist organization… Read More Lord of the Files (Homo Sovieticus)
First posted September 10, 2012 NB: This book is one of the most moving and illuminating memoirs I have ever read, its sad it’s not available in India. I hope a far-sighted publisher will publish it. And I am proud to say that the author has been a close friend of mine for 33 years.… Read More Yudit Kiss: The Summer My Father Died
First posted August 01, 2015 I got out my tape-recorder. My mum frowned. She wasn’t expecting that. “Is it for the Marx Memorial Library?” Because that was what old communists did: donated their body for medical research and their history for class analysis. But I just wanted to record what had happened. To remember Us.… Read More Jo McMillan – Lenin, mum and me: my communist childhood
The solution to the monstrous men of art, Claire Dederer argues, is not to smash our idols but to avoid making them idols in the first place. (Note: I have added some remarks on this which can be read at the bottom of this post) BY LAURA MILLER “Can I still listen to David Bowie?” That’s… Read More The Art of Monstrous People
Rather than confront the inherent role of the university as a class-sorting mechanism (as well as an engine of the military-industrial complex),.. educators settled on a pedagogical model that valued the individual and immediate experiences of students over general civic and literary instruction. In lieu of learning a shared curriculum, students earned course credits through… Read More The Language of Democracy
After the truth-shower 