Can any one recommend Arthur Koestler

[The Lone Liberal]

I find his life to be interesting. I am thinking of reading Darkness at Noon can anyone recommend this book or any of Koestler’s other works?

Is there an author you have discovered that you would like to share.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. Christopher Moore.

Wrote a very funny book called "Lamb". Also "Fluke", "Bloodsucking Fiends:, "The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove" and several others.

A real hottie, also, in the looks department.

[JanMichael]

2. I can!

"Darkness at Noon" is a splended novel about how things can go horribly awry.

Kundera & Caus are my 20th Century favs.

[CarlBallard]

3. Darkness At Noon

Is briliant. I also liked Gladiators, or maybe it's called The Gladiators. It's the story of Sparticus. It wasn't as good as Darkness, but still pretty amazing. The themes of those books has to do with the failure of revolutions, and that's understandable given his life.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

4. Loved "Darkness At Noon"

read it in high school or early college...an interesting treatise on totalitarianism and very fitting given today's climate.

[librechik]

5. "The Roots of Coincidence"

changed my life

[Journeyman]

6. Evan S. Connell. . .

Points for a Compass Rose


Masterful poems that meditate on the follies, cruelties and frailties of humankind. Unlike any other poetry I've read, these poems -- which weave a tapestry of explicit scope, utilizing as it seems all knowledge as their provenance -- form a prose narrative of modern life, wrapped taut around Connel's disillusionment with modern society and the war in Vietnam that stole his son's life. Some selections that do no justice to the beauty and scope of his work. . .


Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister of England
who concurred with President Truman’s decision
to annihilate Hiroshima. However, 16 years later
Attlee wrote: "We knew nothing about the genetic effects
of an atomic explosion. I knew nothing about fall-out
and all the rest…" Yet H.J. Muller had won the Nobel Prize
in 1927 for investigating the genetic effects
of radiation. Are we not ruled by cliques of men
as uninformed as Palestinian shepherds?

* * *

Deaths attributed to leukemia occur more often
at Hiroshima than at Nagasaki. Guess why.
The United States experimented with uranium
on the first city, with plutonium on the next.
Pray for us, if you like. Not that it matters.

* * *

I suppose it could be said another way:
into the pattern of human events
God weaves misfortune so that each generation
shall find a song to sing.

* * *

Of what value is life if it’s not woven
on history’s loom into other lives?

* * *

One thing I don’t question is that space
curves and returns finally upon itself.
Because of this we look towards ourselves
in every direction.

* * *


Oh, never mind! Let’s sing and quarrel
and invent the past.

* * *

Summing it up: Suus cuique mos.
Everybody justifies his own point of view.

* * *

Generations pass, stories change.

* * *

Now I want to tell you something important.
Forget everything else, if you like,
but don’t forget this. As the historian
Simon Dubnow was marked for death by the Nazis
he exhorted his companions to open their eyes
and ears. He urged them to memorize each detail,
each name, every sigh and the color of clouds
as well as the executioner’s gesture. Circumscribed
as I might be, I’ve accepted this obligation.

* * *

I’m reluctant to forgive anyone,
I refuse adamantly to overlook what I think is evil,
and in my opinion silence implies consent.

* * *

The more we study, the more elaborate the puzzle.

* * *

State that every particle of matter in the universe
has some attraction for every other particle.