By Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson is an esteemed writer and historian who wrote such books as A History of the Jews, A History of the American People, and Modern Times.
This book is a summary of the lives and thoughts of 12 intellectuals – one chapter on each. These 12 intellectuals were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Percy Shelley, Karl Marx, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Bertolt Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz and Lillian Helman.
There is one chapter in the book that includes brief sketches of other intellectuals including: George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, Kenneth Tynan, Rainer Fassbinder, James Baldwin and Noam Chomsky.
Johnson defines an intellectual as someone who believes that you can change the world by ideas alone. Each of these individuals believed that they could explain to the world how to live life better. Johnson examined this question: Did these intellectuals model in their own lives how to live life well? They did not. This book can be tedious.
The book is jarring because all 12 of these people who received a chapter were horrible people. The same could be said for most of those receiving the brief sketches. To some extent, Evelyn Waugh received mostly positive comments. These people were brilliant, but they lived atrocious lives. Rousseau, Marx, Russell, Tolstoy and the rest of the 12. Invariably the were egomaniacs, self-centered to an extreme degree, dishonest and deceptive, unfaithful to their spouses, willing to take advantage of others, greedy and avaricious.
For example, Rousseau sent his kids to live in an orphanage because he did not want to be bothered with them. Tolstoy treated his wife abysmally. Hemingway was a self-centered and abusive man who treated his four wives horribly and was a drunk. Karl Marx was a scoundrel, and his ideas did incalculable harm to people.
If people realized what horrible men these were, I doubt that many would be interested in even reading their books.
This book reminds me of the sinfulness of man. Without Christ, there is no end to the iniquity of mankind.