author michael scammell. after that, question times with prime minister gordon brown. and then a look at the election year. . >> michael scammell arthur of "koestler: the literary & political odyssey of a twentieth-century skeptic."

wanted to choose to open a pro of the way you did? >> partly for dramatic effect. partly to achieve my favorite form of literature which is a circle. and partly because i did not see it as symbolic. that is to say, that he had tried in vain to exercise control over what he was doing. he constantly thought about where he was going, what he was thinking, what he was writing. there were three or four attempts at suicide earlier. it seemed to me to have great symbolic effect. >> let me read the first sentence. on tuesday, march 1, 1983, arthur koestler and his wife,

cynthia entered their home and sat down facing each other. he in his favorite leather armchair and she on the couch and for themselves their usual drink before dinner. then what? >> vet drink was laced with something else. -- that drink was laced with something else. obviously, it was a drink designed to kill them. they took their drinks with a great deal of more pain. that was the drug of choice. -- great deal of morphine. he had written a preface to their pamphlet on self delivery. he knew all about the various ways to bring about a death. the curious thing is that this was a man who, in his life, had

led a vigorous and ultimately successful campaign to abolish capital punishment in britain. he did not believe in the death penalty, which she thought was barbaric, but he did believe -- which he thought was barbaric, but he did believe in suicide. >> what was wrong with him at the time? >> that sort of dilutes the romantic image of suicide. he was suffering from leukemia at the time and also parkinson's disease. he had been deteriorating for a couple of years by that point. he made it clear who told was the -- to make clear who he was. >> how old was he?

>> he was 78. >> how old was she and what if she commits suicide with him? >> she was 58. she was 20 years old younker. she felt that she was extraordinarily dependent on him. she lived entirely for him and lived through him, if you would like. she decided she could not face living on her own. she was the suit fitter of the . >> i want to go where i think the american connection is for this on page 199. whitaker chambers, then an obscure journals that time magazine called it the most exciting novel of the season, written by someone who knows

russia and the places of the human mind and other critics echoed his high opinion. from then on words, said arthur koestler later, financial troubles never became pressing for i? why was this important to this country? >> "darkness at noon" was important on a number of levels. it offered an explanation for something that had been baffling westerners in particular for many years. that was the cost astalin show trials.

they happened in secret because authorities did not trust their apparatus and their methods. by 1937, they were holding these trials in open court. leading soviet ministers and officials were the most -- actually confessed in court to a series of crimes which struck people as fantastic. but what could they say to the confessions? many prominent people took these trials at face value. even those who were inclined to deep skepticism found the trials were orchestrated so beautifully that it was very hard to find where the scenes were.

arthur koestler was still a communist at the time and was shaken by the thought that he could not believe they could have done this. he set out to investigate not only the methods, but the psychology of the trials. he adopted a rather interesting approach. first of all, he was steeped in the crime and punishment and that was one of the influences on him. i think another influence was that he set up a show trial as a detective story. he set it up as a kind of psychological tooduel between te

defendant and his interrogators. he based his -- the behavior of the interrogators on the soviet union. he offered a key to the way these things were conducted, but more important, he offered a key to the thinking of the defendants, the people that confessed. he did it by projecting some of his own feelings. he had been feeling guilt. it was one of his dominant emotions and one of his dominant driving forces. he had begun to move well away from the party at this time. he had 1 foot out of it.

he had actually been attacked at a party caucus for one of the books he had written h. he drew on his own psychology. why would he feels officially -- bush efficiently -- sufficiently guilty? he pointed out that when he was a loyalist and had actually been responsible for the deaths of many people, he used the defendant's own conscience against tihim. >> i have the paperback. i found it easily. why did the author only sell to

500 copies? >> -- 2500 copies? >> i don't think it was chambers alone. i think the real answer to the monetary situation is more mundane. it was chosen for the book-of- the-month club. in those days, the book-of-the- month club books were extraordinarily popular and sold in the hundreds of thousands if not more. that combination of things, and i think the other thing is obvious, when he wrote it in 1939, it was just before the outbreak of world war ii. it disappeared in the events of the war.

after the war, for a while, it was banned in germany by the americans and the british because of their cooperation with the soviet army. it was seen as an extremely heavy weapon during the cold war. i know that it was actually taught in schools right up until the fall of the wall. >> you know, on sunday, december 27, you lead the new york times book review section. it was written by christopher caldwell, who we had here on the program. what is your sense that this is that important? >> i think that they bought my

argument and that we should talk about arthur koestler. i like to think that they bought my argument that he is an extremely important figure, that his life was significant and that the books that he wrote remain important and interesting. one should remember, if one wants to be realistic about it, it was written as a bout -- all about -- as a biography. on the other hand, i do not want to suggest that he is venal in any way. i did not know this was going to happen until a week before it happened. >> what impact has it had so far? >> it has brought in a flood of

emails. i would say that the review that"the nein "the new yorker" d just as much of an impact. >> huddy pronounced his last name? -- how you pronounced his last name? -- how do you pronounced his last name -- pronounce his last name. in germany, is "kussler." in the united states it is "kessler."

it is generally "kessler." in europe it is "kussler." how many years -- >> how many years that you spent with him in your life? we are talking 20 years. >> teaching where? >> i was teaching at cornell until 1994 and then i moved to columbia to teach nonfiction writing and translation which is my other hat that i wear. >> so, you are meeting with him. >> back in 1972, i found a magazine called "index on censorship."

it was about censorship in the arts and censorship of political books as well. i edited this for eight years until 1980 when i resigned to write my first biography which was of another man. i was a dinner at david's one evening and he invited to arthur koestler meet me and talk about passing this information on to people who knew that were riding in soviet occupied eastern europe and hungary. >> you said that he spent time

in 14 different countries. what is it 14? i had forgotten the number. >> give us a broad view of where it was. >> he grew up in hungary. his family was thrown out in 1919. they had reacted against a short lived, piani communist occupati. he went to school and university in vienna. vienna was saturated with anti- semitism at the time. he became a scientist -- a zionist. he then moved to palestine.

he was failing in his university studies. in his autobiography, he covered up the real reason. he actually left to get away from his parents, but one could leave without knowing all the way to palestine. he had a very adventurous spirit. as a zionist, and he wanted to see the promised land for himself. it was there that he became a journalist, writing for an obscure paper. >> who is that other fellow in the picture with him? >> this is an unknown fellow journalist. it was taken in jerusalem in 1928. at the time when he had just begun working for the press company.

>> some of the photos we are showing are from your book. is this the first time people have seen them? >> in some cases, yes. in other cases, no. in the arthur koestler archive, there are dozens and dozens of photographs. it was very difficult to make a selection. i would like to have -- i would liked to have printed more. >> go back to palestine. >> he was a very young journalist in palestinian, but what he described about russia, britain and france and america and, he wrote about the saudi

arabian said that he called bolsheviks -- the saudi arabian that he called bolsheviks. -- the saudi arabians that he called bolsheviks. >he'd trained himself as a journalist but he tired of the zionism. he moved to paris, briefly and then to berlin. he became a journalist with the main group of newspapers. because of his interest in science, he quickly got promoted

to science editor. people for got this when he turned to writing about science later in life that he had this intense experience for two or three years in germany. >> by the way, he brought how many books? >> 34, all total. >> how many are novels and how many are non-fiction? >> there are five novels, a couple of plays and the rest are nonfiction. >> of the nonfiction, which were the most successful? >> the most successful -- all of his nonfiction was pretty successful. i make the case in my book that one of the reasons that he has been more forgotten that he should have been was that people tend to think of him as a novelist because of "darkness of noon."

particularly, in his opera biological -- a autobiographal nonfiction. >> did he go from berlin to spain? >> no, he joined the communist party. like many jews of the time, he joined the communist party and got himself to the soviet union on the pretext of writing a political travel book to be called "red days." he traveled around the soviet union with langston hughes. i had great fun writing about their views of one another. >> there is añi picture of him with langston hughes. how did you find all that background information and what

city were they in in russia? >> they met in a city that has a romantic maine. they also moved around in some rather small villages as well. actually, some of the material that is in there was published autobiography iies. i also found the langston hughes papers at yale and the library and read them -- in the library and read them. çó>> how long did he stay in

russia? >> just over 18 months. >> communist the whole time he was there? >> absolutely, yes. part of arthur koestler's charm, -- what makes him impressive is the degree of every ideology that he pursued. when he was a zionist, he was an impeccable zionist. he dug down to the roots of zionism. when he became a communist, he did exactly the same thing. he became an absolute expert. he had an amazing way of assimilating books and ideas. i was rather amused to read one or two of the skeptical reviews

with he was in the ukraine in the early 1930's when there was a famine and he ignored it and pretended it was not there. it was arthur koestler who pointed this out later in life. he understood that he had been blinded with his enthusiasm. you can regard this as a defect or a virtue. once he noered intoñi something, he was blind, in many ways, to its defects. >> we are in the middle 30's and he maries for the first time and i want to go through the three marriages that he had. >> ok. >> and show the pictures of the three women. the first one was 1935. dorothy? >> yes, he was back in france, working as a dutch journalist

and propagandist. he was very down on his block. they were both working for the same man that was a leading propagandist. dorothy was a social worker who had grown up jewish in a quite well-to-do family in germany, which had lost all its money during the depression. she, herself, was a communist. >> how did you get the back story on this most -- of this marriage grande and ma? >> because of the difficult circumstances of their divorce and the bitterness that in soodsued, he promised dorothy tt

he would not describe their marriage at any link. -- any linength. he was off in spain for months and months and they parted soon after he was released from spain. >> what year? >> you know, dates are my nemesis, i think it was 1937. >> did she write about their life together? >> no, and i was extremely lucky that i was able to track her down in the very beginning of my research, shortly before she died. >> what year did to track her down? -- you tractor down? >> -- you track her down?

>> i found her in the london telephone book. i wrote her a letter and then i telephoned her and she very grudgingly said that i could come and visit her. no notes, i was not allowed to take notes. immediately after our conversation, i rushed to the first cafe that i could find and wrote down everything that she had said and i had said. it is something that biographers and writers have to do sometimes. it is not uncommon to be told that you cannot take notes. any writer worth his salt, even by the person that said you cannot take notes, knows that you will make use of that

conversation. i went back for a second visit and spend a little longer with her. >> what did she tell you about the marriage and about the man? >> she was very tight lipped. she told about herself and her background. she told me how they met and how they went to switzerland. she spent quite a bit of time stonewalling my questions. it was very difficult to get information out of her. quite frequently, she would say that she did not want to talk about that. there was very little information on their relationship. she was much happier, which is characteristic of people that were communist, but she still loved to talk about politics. >> the next marriage was 1950. who was that too? >> i should aa that we did

spend a lot of time talking about her life after she and arthur koestler parted. she was stranded when he got out. this was the beginning of the war. he helped her a lot, which he and acknowledged -- he acknowledged the germanauere in full occupation of france. >> the second marriage, 1950. >> the strikingly beautiful identical twin of a debutante in england. they met through a common friend. that friend and a couple of

friends of his were living in the apartment owned by someone with an unusual name. >> you talk to her sister? >> i talked to her sister over a number of years. >> what about you was that to you? >> -- what value was that to you? >> she was shocked by the suicide. it was obvious that he was dying towards the end. despite the fact the turbulenane

of the marriage, she was devoted arthur koestler. when she heard that i was writing the book, i instantly contacted her and she was extremely friendly. not only did she speak at great length and freely about the relationship between arthur koestler and his second wife, but she had published a collection of his second wife'sr letters arthur koestler. it emphasized how bad the relationship was. she gave me the unpublished portions of the correspondence. içó was able to draw on her information, a great deal that

was-and dave fair bet that showed him in a much better light. >> where did they live? >> arthur koestler and dorothy could barely scrape to penny's together. she was better off than he because she had a regular job with an agency doing social work. they lived in one room for quite a long time and then they went off to switzerland because her brother had moved to the soviet union. he ended up being jailed. they were offered his apartment. they weall those with children s

extremely neutral, there were a lot -- although switzerland was extremely neutral, they were not supposed to practice their ideology. ñii knew that he had met the italian novelist theirñi. it was a communist circle -- novelist there. it was a communist circle. >> arthur koestler and his second wife were married how long and where did they live? >> they got married fairly soon after world war two. they live in wales -- live in wales in a place i can still not

pronounced -- lived in wales in a prospectus, pronounce. while he was with dorothy, he had gone too hungry for a while and he was in spain. with his second wife, he rushed off to palestine to write a novel about the struggle between the jews and arabs that was already beginning and they went together into the war. they lived in wales, for a brief while in london, and also lived in paris. they lived together for a year in the united states. >> how long did he live in the united states?

>> he had intended to settle in the united states. he had decided that europe was finished. he came in 1951 and his second wife came afterwards. they lived together for just over a year and he was here for just over two years. >> was there an announcement about communism for was that the "darkness and newt noon" book? >> in 1938, he wrote to the communist caucus to resign from the party. i discovered these in archives. i published it in "the republinw republic."

he resigned in gable the reasons why -- resigned and gave all the reasons why. but as a gesture to the soviet union and old loyalties, he agreed to keep the letters secret. >> how did you find it? >> i founded by a rather roundabout route. i was in -- i found it by a rather roundabout route. i was in israel, and in one of the archives, and i forget which one it was, an artist said that there are some of his papers in moscow. i asked how he knew that. he did not tell me at that time. i believe he already had some of them in his own archive at that point.

arthur koestler was captured by the french police as a communist. he was jailed by the french for several months in a concentration camp. the french confiscated his papers. in fact, the confiscated -- they confiscated "darkness at noon." his english girlfriend helped translate it back into german. there was this-a large collection of papers -- there was this stash of a large collection of papers that were taken back to berlin. they stayed there throughout the war.

when the red army occupied berlin, they took the gestapo archives and took them back to moscow. >> when you finally get that document, do you ever shake your head and say that you cannot believe you found this? >> yes. this was during the gorbachev perestroika. it was very hard work to get there. as someone who had worked with the dissidents, i had been banned from the soviet union for years. i was not sure i would get a visa. i found this archive with great difficulty. it was freezing cold, there. there were nine folders of material. >> do you speak russian?

what i do. -- >> i do. >> where did that start? >> that started in the british army. while i was in the british army, i have done rather well in languages that school -- i have done rather well in languages at school -- i had done rather well in languages that school. it is rather like the courses that were taught in monterey. the absurd thing is that i spent almost the entire time of my national service studying russian. i never used it in any practical way, but it changed my life. i then went to university and got my first degree in russian. >> where?

>> at nottingham university. >> you were born in britain? >> yes. after working in the former yugoslavia, i came to graduate school at columbia and studied russian at columbia. although i went back to the u.k. after four years, it planted a seed. i published papers on censorship and came here to get circulation and to raise money for foundations. after writing one of my books, it was such a huge success that i began to get job offers and so i moved. in fact, none of those original job offers materialized.

i spent six months at the woodrow wilson institute and six months at harvard. i was offered the job at cornell university. that pretty much sealed my fate, except that i very much wanted to stay here by then. >> let's go back to the third marriage. that was to cynthia jefferies, 1965. >> yes. >> what were the circumstances? >> cynthia became a secretary while he was living in paris. she was a stenographer, if you would like. she was also a rather beautiful young woman. she was also rather vulnerable.

she had a record, according to her sister, as a young woman, her father had committed suicide when cynthia was just a child. she had been rather attracted to strong, masterful and even bullying men. arthur koestler was certainly all of those things. they very soon started an affair. >> she is in the picture, the second from the right. >> guess, she is. -- yes, she is. isn't she in the dark in the back? >> yes.

she was a secretary for a while and they separated. he called her back to work for him after his divorce from his second wife and worked as his assistant and secretary and finally she made herself so indispensable and she was planning -- he was planning a trip to the united states. he wanted to bring her with him. he ran to the situation where it would not be acceptable to come with somebody who was not his wife and live with her openly. this was in 1965. they married in new york city at city hall. >> of the women in his wife, there is a quote that you use that he had slept with many

women. >> he suffered from satirizeasi. he was constantly running after women all his life. he seemed to have this insatiable need. sleeping with them what often be a prelude to a very long friendship -- would often be a prelude to a very long friendship. it is said that he had this mania. he had an enormous inferiority complex. >> how big was he? >> 5 foot 6 inches. >> how else would you describe him, personally? >> he had quite a magnetic

personality. he never grew up. that is a plus and ta minus. those that knew him very well in his middle years and early years said that he had this school boyish air. he took ideas extremely seriously. he did not take convention seriously. >> what did he sound like? >> he had this very strong german accent. he spent three-quarters of his life in the english-speaking world and he had this very strong german accent that he was very ashamed of and hated but could never master fanatics.

he spoke five languages pretty fluently at one time. i forget who it was that said that arthur koestler doesn't speak french, he massacres it. the same was true about english. he constantly resisted radio and television. he hated people hearing the way that he spoke. >> his relationship with george orwell, whitaker chambers, important relationships? >> yes, i think so. i would like to get away from the personal and say why i think those relationships work important -- were important. the real reason to write about him is for what he wrote.

the thing about arthur koestler, -- i do not put whitaker chambers anywhere near the same league as a writer. in the english speaking tradition, people like steinbeck, hemingway, certainly, who believed that a writer should beñi not just a writer bt a man of action as well. >> what does that mean? in the politics of the dayñi. they should go to the hot spotsi and visit countries. ñrthere were revolutions of the soviet union. >> what do you think of that

idea? >> now, it seems to be much the business of foreign correspondents. it goes to central africa. but it was very much, for the 20th century, it was a very strong phenomenon. a distinct vein of literature grew out of this approach. it was an attraction to left- wing ideas. in arthur koestler's case, i lynde get to the idea of this search for utopia -- a link to the idea of the search for utopia -- link to the idea of

the search for utopia. he did not think palestine would do it. it did not do it for him. he later became a communist because he witnessed the consequences of the great depression and the poverty and deprivation of the working class. he felt that socialism had the answer. it was this that drew him to communism and the soviet union as it drew monroe and others. if you look at american examples, they are not quite that far to the left, but they were very far to that way of

thinking. all of these men traveled. the great catalyst was the spanish civil war. you could say that what saved -- what kept this utopianismçó alie was the rise of fascism. >> why did franco of spain throw him in jail? >> because he was known to be a communist. i do not think franco's men were aware of the full depth of his involvement in communism, but they were aware that he had been visiting the republican forces in the battle for malaga.

so, they accused him -- ironically, arthur koestler was a real interfere weñir. ñihe tried to advise theñi spanh genk1 about the things that he çóçnñiñrwas doing wrong and whys ob.nñiñrwas doing wrong and whys when he met rhinestone -- when he met einstein, he would explain the theory of relativity to him. that was the boyishness that was always with him. >> let me ask you about your work on this book. when did you get down to writing? what year? >> it was written over such a long period.

i would have to look at my own diaries to tell. i think it must have been in about 1996 or something like that. >> when did you finish? >> not many months ago, actually. i finished the main body of the book just over a year ago. >> you said you did 200 interviews. >> yes. >> to capture all that on tape except for dorothy's interview -- due to capture all lot on tape except for -- did you capture all that on tape except for dorothy's interview? >> sometimes people explicitly did not like paper quarters. >> you say you were venturing into a new idea. >> yes, this book was not as big

as one of my earlier books. a lot of my time, towards the ñiend, was spent cutting. i cut probably close to 80,000- 100,000 words. i had a long correspondence a arthur koestler -- with arthur koestler and busiest -- enthusiasts. i know that there are people that are interested in the minority -- in the material, but they are a minority. i plan to put a lot of that on my website. i want to save other people

having to go and dig up the same stuff. >> how big was his diary and where is it? >> his diary was kept intermittently. there are journals that start and stop. thereñr are detailed diaries tht start and stop as well and then a diary that he kept entire life. >> -- kept his entire life. >> what got you bulk of what you have in this book? -- the bulk of what you have in this book? >> diligence is obviously one of them. i speak in number of languages -- a number of languages. i draw the line at hebrew. that was one element. the other thing is that i have

always been a long distance runner. it when i was in school, i was hopeless at the sprint, but i could run long distance. i enjoyed everyñr minute of it. in many ways, rochthis is my no. it is a novel of research. it is an intricate jigsaw puzzle. >> where did you write? >> i wrote it partly at cornell and partly in new york and a great deal of it at a summer house that we have been hampshire, close to my wife's

birth place. >> what will make this a success for you? >> this book is put together in a rather sophisticated fashion. i would like some appreciation for the part that went into it. the construction of it, the pacing. secondly, the ideas in it. it is a kind of primer on 20th- century politics, particularly the politics of the left. i mentioned the idea of arthur koestler and the other novelists as utopias. most of these fellow novelist that i mentioned and many other people in the 20th century were

religious but they lived in a century that was not religious. arthur koestler later sought those things in science. >> it is eitheyou can get additl informational at your web site. thank you for joining us. >> you are welcome. >> for a dvd copy of this program call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. episodes are also available as podcasts.

>> coming up, prime minister gordon brown out lines british air security measures. then political conversations with a pollster on the 2010 midterm elections and an author on her book. following that, another chance to see q&a with auburn -- o author michael scammell.

>> the senate returns on january 28 and will speak of an increase in debt. off the floor, house and senate democratic leaders are discussing the health care bill and the senate passed its bill on christmas eve, but it does not include the public option which is in the house bill. they have to agree on the same version before sending it to the president. the aim is to get a final bill to the president's desk before the state of the union address sometime in early february. >> i am always concerned about the potential, and for seeing consequences of new regulations. new regulations act as a tax. when you regulate something you tend to diminish it. >> robert mcdowell on