ARTHUR KOESTLER: The Story of a Friendship

by George Mikes ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1984

Warts and all: a casual, colorful, sometimes brutally frank portrait of Koestler. Like his much more celebrated friend, Mikes was born in Hungary and transplanted to England, where he writes travel books and other popular items in a puckish vein. He met Koestler in 1952 and remained more or less close to him until the Koestlers died of an overdose of tuinal on March 1, 1983. But, much as he was awed by his fellow-exile's versatile genius, Mikes never idealized him. With no evident malice he records Koestler's womanizing and heavy drinking, his egoism and arrogance, his neurotic hatred for his mother and despotic treatment of his wife. He quotes, without comment, Einstein's devastating remark that ""God knows everything but Arthur Koestler knows everything better""--apropos of a dinner party where Koestler explained ""the basic tenets of philosophy"" to a Harvard philosophy professor, the elements of nuclear physics to J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the meaning of relativity to Einstein himself. On the painful subject of Koestler's South-African-born wife Cynthia, Mikes admits that Koestler exploited her shamelessly (once giving her dictation as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from appendicitis); but he insists that she wanted it that way--and proved her total devotion by joining him in death, though she was still in good health whereas he was dying from Parkinson's disease and leukemia. Mikes offers a tribute to Koestler as ""the last of the Renaissance men,"" but the Koestler he remembers most fondly is the earthy ben vivant, the brandy-drinking, (Hungarian) sausage-eating, Scrabble-playing ordinary man. This brief memoir will scarcely enhance Koestler's reputation, but it certainly brings his life into sharp personal focus.

Pub Date: May 1, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Andre Deutsch--dist. by David & Charles

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION