Q&A: Author Michael Scammell

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Author Michael Scammell tells Q&A about his book, "Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic." Program from Sunday, January 10, 2010.

Пікірлер: 28

@lamangalamanga 8 жыл бұрын

37:00 The original German manuscript of "Darkness at Noon" was recently discovered at University of Kassel, Zürich. www.uni-kassel.de/uni/nc/universitaet/nachrichten/article/long-missing-original-manuscript-of-the-novel-darkness-at-noon-by-koestler-has-been-found.html

@waterkingdavid 8 жыл бұрын

Wow thats some interesting info and thanks for sharing. One wonders why Koestler wasn't forthcoming about what seems to be the case - that he had retained some of the original in his possession. But then again since Koestler was clearly a believer in esp maybe he indeed was able to pluck the original out of the air! Or perhaps he had a photographic memory. If Rachmaninov could play entire piano pieces of 30 mins from memory after hearing them just once who knows what the human mind is capable of. Amusing fact at the end of that article that on application one can get photo of the student who found the original manuscript! I'll leave that to historians writing books about Koestler.

@mykillmielia5640 6 жыл бұрын

Thanks at lot for the link! Kassel and Zürich (Zurich) are two different cities though, first located in mid-Germany, second in Switzerland. With Kassel it is not meant a name here. Anyway, the document was found by a student from Kassel in the central bibliothek in Zurich.

@felixgenor 6 жыл бұрын

Interesting interview. Only one mistake: the encounter with Langston Hughes is not described in "The Arrow in the blue" as professor Scamell says but in the second part of AK´s autobiography, "Invisible writing"

@ausendundeinenacht 11 жыл бұрын

Hi kress hope youre doing more on the

@rickwilmot9127 4 жыл бұрын

Nice to see you, Mr. Scammell. We did email each other a couple of years ago. I didn't like the interviewer here. I first came across Koestler in a book called 'The Teachings of the Mystics' by W.T. Stace. That was back in the 1960s. During the last 10 years or so, I've read almost everything by Koestler. Right now I'm waiting for the Midwife Toad to drop through the letter box. Your book (English title) is still on my shelf and I often refer to it.

@DanseDePuck 4 жыл бұрын

Agreed on the interviewer. I wonder why such a stern and unfriendly demeanor throughout the interview. Mr. Scammell seems a friendly enough face not to deserve this ogre shooting questions at him..

@morkeljakeson9438 Жыл бұрын

The interviewer is fine. He is not overly stern. He is simply direct. He asks more statistical questions, but he has had to interview so many authors on so many subjects

@willangle4444 5 жыл бұрын

Scammell mentions that Koestler spent time in a French Concentration Camp, but he leaves out the book written about Koestler's experience: The Scum of the Earth. One of Koestler's best works. A book that shows that Koestler was more of an Anti-Fascist than an Anti-Communist. Koestler never resigned from his beliefs of libertarian communism; he resigned from the authortarian state capitalist "communist" party. Read An Act of Creation. Read Ghost in the Machine. Koestler never become a capitalist. The dude was am anarchist; fuck'n A, he was in the same camp as Orwell and Camus. Scammell is kind of misrepresenting Koestler.

@johnsharman7262 Жыл бұрын

Scum of the Earth is fresh and vibrant as a document, perhaps one of his best books.

@physionomics 8 жыл бұрын

Hi, great and informative, thank you! Why not mention his work on Holarchy?

@ausendundeinenacht 11 жыл бұрын

This video here was v interesting I ve read the Koestler book , iI forget the title, about the (uselesness of the Geneva conferences , beginning 20th century) a long time ago, as a kid, and found it grim but very important,and its kinda ironic that I now live in Geneva and find that what he wrote was true and still applies to this white elephant, the UN

@TheatreCritic 11 жыл бұрын

Professor Scammell comes across as very impressive.

@ausendundeinenacht 11 жыл бұрын

just for the record and ,admittedly , it s not THAT important bnow but koestler s name is pronounced as kostler with an umlaut and certainly not as Kessler as your man here said, its a german name after all The book sounds great btw, will try to lay my grubby paws on it sometime soon

@selmo6376 7 жыл бұрын

Can anyone inform me about Koestler's zionism ? I think anyway that he must have made many jews angry with his book "The Kazars". For me it was a kind of a surprise to learn he was a zionist. The fact that the land of palestine was not an empty place as the zionist mythology used to preach sine the 19 century but inhabited by palestinians would not have made Koestler think about it? , make him somehow unconfortable ? ... since he was a man preocupied with political and social injustice ? Thanks

@therespectedlex9794 6 жыл бұрын

Are bullies ever interested in justice?

6 жыл бұрын

Interestingly, Michael Scammell is British, but has lost his British accent....

6 жыл бұрын

Koestler was a serial womanizer

@musicaflowerchild5540 4 жыл бұрын

But he was NOT an idiot.

@jympaulmor 13 жыл бұрын

Scammell is a far better biographer than Koestler was a writer. It always struck me that Koestler is more interesting for what he was than for what he wrote.

@peterdevlin51 5 жыл бұрын

read Ghost In the Machine. He was a very good writer

@nickheather3624 11 ай бұрын

Hey, thanks for the info. a really valuable contribution to literary criticism (coming from such a respected source).

@jimpalmer2981 11 ай бұрын

@@nickheather3624 It's just precious that, twelve years after the comment, you come rushing in with a screaming case of butthurt to defend Koestler, but I'm right. Look at the facts: He wrote one good book, "Darkness at Noon," which is more or less irrelevant today since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Marxism as a viable political theory. And before you say it, "Blah blah penetrating insight into the mind of the True Believer, relevant and useful as long as humanity blah blah," not really. There have been many better novels about the psychology of the True Believer, and DaN in large part addresses aspects of the phenomenon specific to Bolshevism. There aren't any more Bolsheviks, and no, tankies don't count. DaN is interesting as an historical document, but really not much more than that. The rest of his books were mediocre at best (Ghost in the Machine and Yogi and Commissar were--okay, but nothing spectacular) , and in his later years, he went skipping merrily down the kook rabbithole to crank theories and pseudoscience, and he didn't even do any original research on those. He just restated other people's generally flawed arguments ("Thirteenth Tribe" was essentially a recap of David Dunlap's arguments, and those have been conclusively proven to be false). Those last books are just reportage, and sadly credible reportage at that. If that's too long for you, Koestler was an interesting but minor 20th century writer who's barely remembered and not taken seriously today. As far as respected sources, I got an MA in Russian lit. What do you have, kid?

@avatarofenlightenment386 4 жыл бұрын

The interviewer is obtuse, insensitive, asks the wrong questions, and thinks he is clever by trying to put off the interviewee with factual questions of little or no importance to the issue: what were Koestler's ideas and why were they important? Aggravating style.