home | Psychology of Video Games | contact | about | RSS 
« Book Review: More Information Than You Require |Main| Book Review: Nudge »
Book Review: Darkness at Noon December 22, 2008
Note: This is #63 in my 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge for 2008.
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler is another attempt to balance out my literary diet with something from the classics buffet, and while I think it fits that bill I wish I had enjoyed it a bit more. Set in the late 1930s it's Yet Another Book About How Communism Sucks, featuring a retired (mostly by virtue of being jailed) revolutionary named Rubashov who is imprisoned and questioned about his activities as they relate to revolting against the rvolution that revolted from the revolting totalitarian regime of the turn of the century Russia. Well, presumably. Neither Russia nor communism are ever overtly mentioned, but the implications are pretty strong.
During his imprisonment Rubashov ponders his past life as a revolutionary, recalling how he betrayed and sentenced people to death in the service of his ideals and how he had to make so many hard choices for the greater good. He's also questioned about these decisions and moral quandries directly by his tormenters during scenes of interrogation and psychological manipulation --with which Ruboshov has personal experience on both sides. The book worked best for me as an examination of these kinds of sticky and morally vague intersections of big ideas and little people. If you have an ideal, what kinds of tragedies are acceptable in its defense and pursuit? There's also a lot of stuff in there about communism, democracy, individual versus group needs, and a lot of other similar themes.
Where the book didn't work so well for me was when it got bogged down in philosophical exploration of these topics through the literary technique of two talking heads. There would be long passages where Rubashov and his interrogators would engage in protracted philosophical sparring, each one making points and counter-points and it was easy to lose track of what was actually being discussed among all the abstractions and debate tactics. I suppose this was largely the point Koestler was trying to make in some ways, but the end result was that I got bored a lot. I much prefer the approach that some other authors have taken when dealing with largely the same topic: tell a story and illustrate the gist of your philosophy rather than delivering it in monologues and dialogues.
Comments (0) |
Permalink | 
File under:
Books
Tags: Arthur Koestler, Book Review, Darkness at Noon, Literature
