alphadesigner's reviews
100 reviews

What I missed while reading this book was a simple smile. It's dead serious from start to finish. I know that's the idea and any sense of humor would have spoiled the terror that it is supposed to depict. And yet I hoped, until the last page, that the mood would brighten up, even for a single moment. Maybe Orwell hoped for the same thing but he couldn't fulfill it. Some stories are bigger than their author and his readers. This is one such story.

One of my personal heroes tells the story of his life in a fascinatingly ordinary way.

I read "My Last Sigh" for the first time in 1998 when it was published in Bulgaria. I remember how pleasantly surprised I was. As a cinema student who was aware how inaccessible Buñuel's movies could be, I expected something hard to read. But pretty soon I realized I couldn't have been more wrong. It's one of those biographies which feel like they were written not for the public but for the author himself. It's a story of self exploration, of contemplation, and closure. The unpretentious and simple style in which it was written makes you forget about the famous author and focus on what matters most -- his journey through space and time.

For such a critically-acclaimed work, the plot is surprisingly flat and on occasions resembles a sloppy soap opera. While I was reading it, I couldn't resist the comparisons to Orwell's 1984 and more often than not, things weren't in Huxley's favor. Then I realized that this was a completely different book and as distracting as its shortcomings can be, the ideas behind it are fascinating and grandiose.

Huxley may not be good in dealing with characters but his ability to construct dystopian worlds, with all the bells and whistles that make them credible and believable, is staggering. At the same time, he doesn't offer a clear way out, something that I found particularly intriguing.

It's easy, at least for me, to imagine a better alternative to Orwell's Big Brother nightmare. However, the alternative to Huxley's Brave New World is a definite trade off, which makes the choice between the two a matter of personal masochistic taste. Where would you choose to exist? In a world devoid of emotion but full of comfort or in a world full of drama but ravaged by disease?

There is no middle ground here, you can't cherry-pick between the two and construct your own version. The vital ideas that help one of the worlds flourish become completely destructive when you transplant them in the other one. This is the real intrigue in this book and it's much larger than its plot. Had I approached the book with less preconceptions, I would have been able to spot it earlier and enjoy it more but nevertheless, it was an amazing experience, despite its faults.

There are many impressive philosophical points that can be made against racism and all kinds of tribal superiority but this book takes a purposely scientific approach in confronting the issue. The arsenal of examples is impressive and unites archeology, epidemiology, climatology, linguistics... The author starts with a note about human intelligence and our inherently subjective methods of measuring it. Then, chapter by chapter, the most widespread assumptions of racial supremacy are put under the microscope, dissected with facts, and ultimately refuted as misguided prejudice, or (at best) a misunderstanding of causes and effects. Here and there the author sprinkles some humor, which makes this book easy to read, and this is achieved without sacrificing quality or diminishing the seriousness of its message.

The author claims that any biography of Stalin should be intricately linked to the history of the world and cannot be detached from the enormous political and cultural shifts at the beginning of the 20th century. In other words, if the people want to understand Stalin's personality, they have to be prepared to digest a lot of dry matter that has little direct dramatic impact. It's hard to argue against this, especially in retrospective. Imagine writing about Hitler without mentioning nazism. The problem is that the author uses this statement to produce a narrative that becomes less and less balanced as the book progresses.

The first third really feels like a biography, with the necessary historical backgrounds. Unfortunately, during the second third Stalin's persona is completely sidelined and the book turns into a history of the early Soviet Union and the bureaucratic tone is occasionally peppered with a refreshing gossip and intrigue that never reaches a narrative climax. Stalin returns during the last third but almost exclusively as a bureaucrat and not as a human being. This is perhaps necessary, since he seems to have devoted almost every aspect of his life to politics but in a biography, this comes with a price.

However, this doesn't mean the book is flawed. The sheer amount of data it contains can be extremely helpful to people who are specializing on the subject. The author's sense of humor also adds a plus here and there, offering a refreshment in a desert of quotes from speeches and official documents. The ordinary readers who simply want to read a story of Stalin's life may end up disappointed but I would still recommend this book to anyone interested. After all, dry historical facts also have a value and not everything can be dramatically regurgitated to appease the general public. The only true obstacle is the length of the book. Reading and understanding it can be very time-consuming.