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Intelektuál Ve Dvacátém Století (2010)

by Tony Judt(Favorite Author)

4.16 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Prostor

review 1: A very odd book for any number of reasons. The greatest cause of oddity is Timothy Snyder, who interviews Judt and edits his responses, while putting in a few words of his own, either when he has a particularly good thought, or when Judt's words need context. The oddness comes from the first third of the book, in which Judt repeatedly tells Snyder that being half Jewish isn't that important to him, and that Jewish history isn't that important when thinking about world affairs... and Snyder repeatedly asks Judt to talk about being half Jewish and the importance of Jewish history in world affairs. A friend suggests to me that this might be Snyder trying to clear his own name; recently, at least, he's been the target of anti-anti-semitism, because he had the temerity to point... more out that a lot of people died in Eastern Europe who weren't Jewish. The next cause of oddity is Snyder's bizarre beliefs i) that 'democracy' in the United States was destroyed by Bush v. Gore, as if a president being elected even though (I exaggerate for effect) 10% of the population voted for him, whereas 10.1% usually vote for presidents; ii) that the war in Iraq is somehow a treasonous rejection of everything that America stands for, rather than, say, business as usual. Anyway, Snyder is incapable of seeing his own time objectively; Judt is much better at that. Third, you get Judt's own slightly ridiculous self-glamorization as an outsider in the historiographical world--which ramps up, unexpectedly, *right when he's being made chairman of his history department and setting up his own little research establishment.* Some of Judt's points about the history profession, and academic life in general, are perfectly accurate; I'd be more impressed if he'd acknowledged how he benefited from the very life he's criticizing. And fourth, the differences between Snyder, an American liberal, and Judt, an ex-pat social democrat, play out very strangely. Watching the two of them discuss communism, socialism, the histories of those movements, and their relationship to contemporary politics is fascinating, but both seem to someone my age to be marked a bit too strongly with Cold War prejudices--Snyder particularly, but also Judt when he's in Isiah Berlin mode--against, you know, trying to make the world better. This clashes rather brutally with their repeated assertions that the free market isn't free, or all that good at making human life bearable. A little less skepticism towards changing the world would have been nice. On the other hand, all of these oddities get softened occasionally, as when Judt suggests that democracy is neither sufficient nor necessary for a good, open society. One final note: this is not an introduction to twentieth century history, intellectual or otherwise, and if you don't know much about it, I'm not sure you'll get much from the book. I'm sure I failed to understand plenty of allusions.
review 2: This is a rather serious and intense book but the format makes it harder to understand than it needs to be.Tony Judt was a fantastic writer, intellectual and historian and this book was created during the last years of his life, when a debilitating degenerative condition made it physically impossible for him to write. His friend and colleague Timothy Snyder proposed a series of conversations, during which they would review and reflect on the history of the twentieth century. These conversations are the basis of this book, transcribed as it was always envisaged they would be.Each section is introduced by Judt, with the remainder consisting of a conversation with Snyder. It would be hard to imagine two more expert and learned conversationalists. But the format is a bit distracting, and themes come and go.It is a valiant adoption of an unusual approach to create something between a memoir and an extended interview. But it is just too diffuse to recommend to any but the most committed reader of the great Tony Judt, in my opinion. less

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