Scan barcode
A review by jjupille
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
4.0
Act of Creation is a hugely important book for me, but I hadn't read any of Koestler's fiction. This is pretty good - doesn't try to do too much, and in the end manages to weave in a number of interesting thoughts around reason and morality, Marx and Jesus Christ, individuals and social wholes (or vice-versa).
A few notes from the last section.
The unerring logic of the Soviet system was that "the slightest deflection from the line of the Party must inevitably end in counter-revolutionary banditry" (p. 249). He pins this down wonderfully - this is what Gletkin got Rubashov to see, and hence why he ended up signing and confessing to everything - it was all true, in just the sense given above.
The old neighbor, Wassilij, whose daughter sounds like she would denounce him (or worse) just to get his appartment, lamenting the world that has been made: "It's come to this in the world now that cleverness and decency are at loggerheads, and whoever sides with one must do without the other" (p. 254). The narrator, a bit farther on: "There one had it: either one behaved cleverly or one behaved decently: the two did not go together" (p. 254).
"I" is the "grammatical fiction"; cipher 2--4 (p. 259).
"The 'oceanic sense' was counterrevolutionary" (p. 262).
For the Party, "the definition of an individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million" (p. 262).
Marxism vs. Jesus Christ: can't let reason run "amuck" (sic), need morality (pp. 263-264). The "mistake in the system" was "the precept, the ends justify the means". "We have thrown aboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast" (p. 265).
Contra reductionism: "Perhaps they will teach that the tent is wrong which says that a man is the quotient of one million divided by one million" (p. 266).
Social wholes, per "a new kind of arithmetic based on multiplication: on the joining of a million individuals to form a new entity which, no longer an amorphous mass, will develop a consciousness and an individuality of its own" (p. 266).
A few notes from the last section.
The unerring logic of the Soviet system was that "the slightest deflection from the line of the Party must inevitably end in counter-revolutionary banditry" (p. 249). He pins this down wonderfully - this is what Gletkin got Rubashov to see, and hence why he ended up signing and confessing to everything - it was all true, in just the sense given above.
The old neighbor, Wassilij, whose daughter sounds like she would denounce him (or worse) just to get his appartment, lamenting the world that has been made: "It's come to this in the world now that cleverness and decency are at loggerheads, and whoever sides with one must do without the other" (p. 254). The narrator, a bit farther on: "There one had it: either one behaved cleverly or one behaved decently: the two did not go together" (p. 254).
"I" is the "grammatical fiction"; cipher 2--4 (p. 259).
"The 'oceanic sense' was counterrevolutionary" (p. 262).
For the Party, "the definition of an individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million" (p. 262).
Marxism vs. Jesus Christ: can't let reason run "amuck" (sic), need morality (pp. 263-264). The "mistake in the system" was "the precept, the ends justify the means". "We have thrown aboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast" (p. 265).
Contra reductionism: "Perhaps they will teach that the tent is wrong which says that a man is the quotient of one million divided by one million" (p. 266).
Social wholes, per "a new kind of arithmetic based on multiplication: on the joining of a million individuals to form a new entity which, no longer an amorphous mass, will develop a consciousness and an individuality of its own" (p. 266).