Mar
18
2007

what i'm reading now: 'darkness at noon'

I confess, I bought Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon on the basis of its cover, which vaguely reminded me of Soviet propaganda and Saul Bass movie posters. But the book itself, while occasionally a bit stilted, is rather interesting on its own — particularly once I did some reading about the book, its setting (the Soviet Union early on in Stalin’s rule) and its author. It’s a setting I know embarrassingly little about, actually.

On a related note, while reading about the book, I came across an interesting observation / comparison from Christopher Hitchens in an essay for Slate:

Rubashov has one fatal weakness, which is that of the open-minded intellectual: “the familiar and fatal constraint to put himself in the position of his opponent, and to see the scene through the other’s eyes.” His dogmatist jailers suffer from no such disadvantage. This is a crux that has relevance well beyond the time and place in which it was set. Orwell’s more widely read Nineteen Eighty Four, which has many points of similarity with Darkness at Noon, makes the same terrifying point that the fanatics don’t just want you to obey them: They want you to agree with them.

(Slate: “Darkness at Noon” - 09/13/05)

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Posted at 12:23 AM in books & literature

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Comments

Hitchens observation is absolutely correct. Unfortunately, people forget about the conclusions which are drawn from it.
A very appropriate example: world community (via UN) dealing with the irrational and fanatical regime in Iran by trying to place itself in their shoes.
But they are not interested in “open-minded” arguments:they want us not only to agree with them, they want us to ACCEPT ( if necessary, forcibly) their
world view and adopt their
way of life and religion.

Posted by ELLENPOUGH on March 25, 2007 10:17 PM

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