Ok, so you have read the reviews (
gewanted=print&position=top">NYT,
Weekly, etc.) and you want to know the bottom line - is this book worth
buying? My answer is: it depends. It depends on what you are looking for
and what interests you. If you are looking for a straightforward scholarly
work on the history of Soviet terror this is not the book for you. If on
the other hand, you enjoy a skilful writer and critic wrestling with the
mind numbing horror and tragedy of communism in the Soviet Union - and its'
historical and intellectual implications in our time - then you might enjoy
this work.
%3D2-1/kevinholtsber-20/103-3278746-4221438">Koba the Dread is, as many
reviewers have pointed out, an odd book. The oddness is introduced by the
personal information and perspective that the author - novelists and
literary critic Martin Amis - brings to the book, especially at the end.
Although at first blush Amis' life long friendship with Soviet scholar
Robert Conquest and his intellectual sparing with his father, and his close
friend Christopher Hitchens on the subject may seem germane, in the end
they are distractions. It seems to me that a great deal of this personal
information could have been edited out. What it really constitutes is the
author's awkward struggle to come to terms with the issues and events
contained in the rest of the book. The problem is that these passages do
not bring any great insight but rather move the focus away from the books
subject to its author. If I had to guess I would think that the e!
ditors saw these passages as the equivalent of intellectual gossip - high
brow but juicy personal bits to jazz up the subject and make it more
personal. This tactic fails but not in my opinion fatally.
What Amis is struggling with is why communism's reputation seems so
harmless, especially as compared to fascism. Why is Hitler (the little
moustache as Amis notes) the very symbol of evil but Stalin (the big
moustache) a vague and fuzzy memory - Hitler and the Nazis were evil but
communism simply "failed." Throughout Amis asks "Why" often using the
Russian word "Zachto." Early on Amis outlines the problem:
But the fact remains that despite "more and more voluminous and
unignorable evidence" to the contrary . . . the USSR continued to be
regarded as fundamentally progressive and benign; and the misconception
endured until the mid-1970's. What was it? From our vantage it looks like
a contagion of selective in-curiosity, a mindgame begun in self-hypnosis
and maintained by self-hysteria. And although the aberration was of
serious political utility to Moscow, we still tend to regard it as a
bizarre and embarrassing sideshow to the main events. We must find a
more structural connection." (Emphasis mine)
Article comments
1 - Prentiss Riddle
Interesting review. Thanks for posting it. It makes the book sound like it's worth reading as more than a curiosity for Martin Amis fans.
You say that Amis failed to show why communism evokes nostalgia while nazism evokes horror. Did his raising the topic at least provoke you to do your own thinking about why? I suppose I've always thought that the difference had something to do with the motives we project on the two movements: it's possible to imagine the communist enterprise beginning from a sincere desire to make the world a better place, whereas fascism from the outset declares itself to be based on hatred. That may be simplistic as to the actual history of the movements, but those are two paths which seem to have been recapitulated by many a young person who joined up. Or am I wrong?
In the US, at least, I also associate a sympathy with communism with a repudiation of the narrow and ignorant ways of its most visible opponents: if the Reagan-Nixon-McCarthy-etc. camp sees communism as pure evil (along with mind-altering substances, music with a beat and making love with the lights on) then there must be something good about it. This belief that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is of course a fallacy which leads to all sorts of tragic mistakes.
2 - Nathan Lott
Thought you might be interested to know I referenced your review on my own blog. I haven't read the book and don't presume to have an opinion on it, but an Amis article in Harper's caught my attention recently. At any rate, I'm glad to see blogcritics examining serious literature. Thanks.
Here's my piece, for anyone interested:
I'm pleased to report that Slate's Anne Applebaum has added her articulate voice to the chorus of critics chiding Martin Amis for the shortcomings of his quasi history of Stalinist terror, Koba the Dread… Even this blogcritic acknowledges that Amis's interweaving of memoir-esque material obfuscates his theme. (Here, parenthetically, I acknowledge the bias clearly revealed in my leade.)
I'm not an Amis reader (père Kinsely nor fis Martin) but I did read Martin's unconvincing diatribe on novel writing as an antidote/antithesis to religion in The Guardian, which is now reprinted in the current Harper's. I'm at a lost to explain why the latter chose to reprint such a disjointed piece, which seems all the less relevant for it's now-passé references to the aftermath of 11 September. Even The Guardian's secular audience found reason to slam the piece, twice. The reader who warned against allowing novelists to presume to be social theorists"outside of their artwork"proved prescient. In both the essay and book, Amis attempts to make sense of real life using the model of literary criticism. Rather backwards, I'm afraid. Fiction helps us understand/deal with reality, but crit. is for lit. not life. Of course, if you have no religion (in a broad sense here) you might think a critics lens as good as any.
But back to Harper's a moment: Why reprint a bad essay? Either 1) the editors can't tell bad from good (again, I’m not a regular reader so I can't say, though I doubt this), 2) the reprint was tangential promotion for their chum's Koba…, or 3) their blind anti-religion stance (revealed in the headers for this and other recent pieces) made 'em do it. I suspect a combination of 2 and 3. Which prompts me to say at least Amis has the integrity to acknowledge his opinions as such and, if not explicitly, admit that his life has shaped his perspective. I searched Harper's website and found no professed editorial stance. The publication is guilty of a typical sin (small s) of the left: failing to acknowledge one's bias. Generally, conservatives own up to their ideology. Their contemporaries on the left however, like to cloak themselves in robes of academia and pretend their opinions are the logical conclusions of learning. Honest left-leaners will at least label themselves "progressive." Those who pretend their beliefs are those of all learned men (and women) are delusional and/or self-righteous, which is far worse than idealistic. (Let's get a few bloggers off the NYT's back and let them take a look at the magazine rack.)