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| The Afterlife of Arthur Koestler
JULIAN BARNES |
9
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During a brief exchange with Scammell in the TLS, Cesarani quoted the authority of a letter sent by Koestler's executor, Harold Harris, to the Edinburgh library "giving his permission for me to use the archive for a study 'which will seek to reevaluate Arthur Koestler's life and thought in terms of his Jewishness.' I think it is fair to say that the finished volume conformed to this remit." It's revealing, however, to note the exact point at which Cesarani chooses to start quoting Harris's letter: after the word "study." "Study" is a rather capacious word; a study might well grow, or, in Cesarani's preferred verb, broaden. But the word in Harris's letter which Cesarani here replaces is "monograph." This is what Harris, who has died since, thought he was giving permission for. Something altogether more scholarly-sounding; something much less inclined to broaden. So a monograph becomes a study becomes a biography, though both Cesarani and his publishers avoid the B-word as much as possible (according to his TLS letter he has written only a "work," "study," "volume," and "book"). Scammell would be entitled to regard Cesarani as the literary equivalent of a tomb-robber. And what price now Cesarani's complacent assertion that his father "taught me what justice means and what it is to live decently"? There is another telling aspect to the book's "broadening": that it seems to have happened remarkably late. Despite Cesarani's assertion that those who knew Koestler were either "beguiled or alienated," he still conducted "interviews with many of those" who knew him. How many is many? Not as many as you might think. Cesarani lists a mere fifteen at the back of his book; though more revealing than their sparseness is their spread. Two in 1994, two in 1995, none in 1996, none in 1997, then eleven between April and August 1998. The impression of an archive man startled into the obligations of biography seems confirmed. |
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