Word: koestlers
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...should a writer, such as [Arthur] Koestler, having abandoned Communism, be considered a hero or martyr to the cause of liberty, while a writer who abandoned the cause of Fascism at the height of its power-and for the same reasons for which Koestler abandoned Communism-be considered a traitor...
Polanyi thinks that the State Department might have refused him because of the two contacts he had with pro-Russian groups, both at a time when he was attacking Soviet scientific method. The Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR approached him in 1940. This was just after Arthur Koestler had dedicated his anti-communist. "The Yogi and the Commissar" to Polanyi. Polanyi never took part in the group's activities, and claims his sole purpose in joining was to use translations of Russian works which the group could procure for him. He said the society was not pre communist...
Many of his passages resembel those of Dostoevsky and Thomas Wolfe at their stream-of-consciousness best. But in a sense he transcends both; for while they mask themselves as characters in novels, Koestler admits that he is laying bare his soul before his readers. He also has the advantage (questionable to be sure) of a familiarity with Freudian psychoanalysis. One wonders whether the author has not gone a bit overboard when he uses this method to explain his youth in Budapest. It is difficult to believe that a man can become so detached from himself as to reveal...
...Koestler does not stop at divulging the internal forces that molded his character and destiny. He tries--too hard--to discuss the world developments between 1905-31 that led him to embrace Zionism an eventually the "progressive schizophrenia" of Communism. Here the reader's interest flags. I think he sacrificed too much continuity to show how much he was the product of his environment...
Unfortunately "Arrow in The Blue" ends in mid-air, just when the writer has joined the party. It is the first of two volumes on the Koestler story. If this one was not too much of a catharsis for the author, the sequel should make as exciting and valuable reading...