Return to Article Details Arthur Koestler’s America, Part I: Experiencing the Country and its Inhabitants

Introduction

While Arthur Koestler has no American novel, American characters do feature in many of his books (with the logical exception of his historical The Gladiators (1939) portraying the Third Servile War, and Darkness at Noon (1940) with its focus on Soviet show trials). In fact, his first American characters appear as early as 1933, in two novellas, A Sárga Kimonó [The Yellow Kimono] and A 313-as akta [File #313], both of which Koestler co-authored with Andor Németh. Beyond these early texts, there are also a number of Americans in his stories throughout his career, including his very last novel, The Call-Girls: A Tragi-Comedy with Prologue and Epilogue (1972). In some, as in Arrival and Departure (1943), they are not even named, while in The Age of Longing (1951), it is the protagonist, Hydie Anderson, who happens to be American. Thus, given this continuous presence in Koestler’s oeuvre, it is only natural to wonder: 1) where these characters and Koestler’s rather critical portrayal originate, and 2) if there are some common features in their representation, as well as 3) if it is possible to detect some development in their portrayal. The present article is the first unit of a two-part study, attempting to answer the first of these questions, discussing Koestler’s relevant formative experiences in the United States and beyond, and highlighting the attitudes and emotional reactions they formed. The planned second part of this study then is going to compare these findings with the portrayal of Americans and the United States herself in Koestler’s work to answer the two remaining questions.

An Overview of Koestler’s American Experience

Koestler’s personal story involving US citizens and the country itself was relatively extended, at least from March 1948 onwards, when he first arrived in the country, spending over two months there (Scammell 2009, 315-24), returning to the European continent on May 8 of the same year (Goodman 1985, 78). His next American stay was even longer: he arrived in the autumn of 1950 (Scammell 2009, 371) and bought Hendrick Island (then called Island Farm) in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania, a few months later (378). This idea, to move to the United States, however, reached further back, as his wife, Mamaine, noted in some letters addressed to her twin sister, Celia. A letter sent on April 11, 1950, predating Koestler’s decision to move to the United States by just a few months already presented this idea as a realistic possibility: “K depressed: decided to sell the [French] house [in Verte Rive] this summer and move to the States, leaving everything here (selling it) except his books” (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 134). Yet, Koestler at the very least flirted with the idea as early as 1947 (45-46). In fact, in 1950, he not only moved to the island he bought, leaving his life in the UK and in France behind for some time, but, eventually, he even became a permanent resident of the United States in the summer of 1951 (Scammell 2009, 397), living in the country until April 1952 (403). Celia Goodman, Mamaine Koestler’s twin sister, attributes Koestler’s decision to move to the United States to his conviction that “he needed a wider view of world affairs and a deeper knowledge of American culture” (Goodman 1985, 161). Koestler’s resolute decision, however, lasted only approximately a year and a half, and he moved back to Europe in April 1952. His next extended visit came after a considerable break of eight years, in January 1960 (Scammell 2009, 479). At that point, Koestler spent an intensive month in the country. Finally, he returned for one last longer stay in January 1965. This time for six months, on a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (Hamilton 1982, 341), renting a house in Palo Alto, CA (Scammell 2009, 500). Following this last stay, however, Koestler ventured on the soil of the American continent for short visits only.

Besides these stays, however, he also had some memorable personal experiences with Americans even before his first stay in the United States. Three of those people stand out enough both in terms of the length of time Koestler spent with them, as well as considering the intensity of these encounters to warrant their discussion here. Both meetings happened in the early 1930s. The first of the two took place in July 1931, when Koestler was a member of the arctic expedition of the Graf Zeppelin airship that lasted for eight days between July 24 and July 31 (Koestler 1952, 324-45). There were “two Americans (including the polar explorer Lincoln Ellsworth)” (Scammell 2009, 72-3) on board during this memorable journey. Koestler’s second noteworthy meeting with an American came approximately a year later: he spent several intensive and intimate weeks with Langston Hughes in the Soviet Union.

Koestler and the Americans on Board the Zeppelin

In 1930, Koestler was named the scientific editor of Vossische Zeitung, a mere “three weeks after his twenty-fifth birthday” (70), and it was in this function of his that he ended up as the only correspondent on the Graf Zeppelin during its arctic mission. The night before departure “Koestler showed [Lincoln] Ellsworth and his fellow American something of Berlin’s nightlife” (73). Koestler, Ellsworth and a certain “Commander Smith, U. S. Navy” (Koestler 1952, 328) returned from their “special expedition” a mere “half an hour before the start, under the disapproving eyes of the Herren Professoren on board” (328), presumably departing on the journey with a hangover, not to mention their sleep deprivation, yet just as likely with a strong shared experience preceding the special journey itself.

Unfortunately, much less is known about Koestler’s interaction with the two Americans during the expedition than the night before. His news dispatches, nevertheless, did mention them twice. In his piece published on August 3 in the Buffalo Evening News, and sent a day earlier, he recalled Smith alerting the rest of them to the extraordinary landscape below:

"The most amazingly fascinating sight of the entire flight spread before us on our last day in the Arctic. We were called by Commander Smith, of the U.S. Coast Guard service.1
“Look!” he exclaimed. “We are on the moon.”
We saw a landscape so incredible that it surpassed anything seen previously. Our altitude was 1200 feet. […] Beneath us were abrupt peaks of about 600 feet, rising through swirling white pits of fog.
Had our instruments not told us, it would have been impossible to say how deep was that abyss beneath the fog blanket, and where the earth lay." (Koestler 1931a, 3)

Lincoln Ellsworth’s name appeared in an earlier, July 29 broadcast, once again published a day after the experience described actually took place. Ellsworth is mentioned in the context of the airship’s scheduled contact with the Malygin, a soviet arctic ship:

"Before sighting the icebreaker, there was a lively exchange of radio messages between Gen. Umberto Nobile, on the Maligin [sic], and Prof. Rodolphe Samoilovitsch [sic] and Lincoln Ellsworth, on the Graf. The first message we sent to Gen. Nobile was: “A thousand wireless greetings. Dr. [Hugo] Eckener [the captain of the Graf Zeppelin] invites you to come abroad the Graf for a cup of tea.” […] The invitation was accepted." (Koestler 1931c, 2)

Accepted invitation notwithstanding, “the airship took off again only thirteen minutes after its arrival” (Scammell 2009, 74) and owing both to “danger from floating icebergs” (74) and the logistical nightmare of transferring “some 75,000 letters and postcards weighing 300 kilos” (Koestler 1952, 321), Ellsworth’s meeting with Nobile paradoxically ended up being little more than a mere handshake:

"The door of the nacelle was blocked by the accursed mailbags which Eckener had ordered to be unloaded first. So the men in the boat, all very picturesque-looking in their heavy fur coats, had to content themselves with popping their grinning faces in through the windows of the nacelle, clutching the outer rails and yelling in Russian. One of them was shouting for Ellsworth; this was Nobile. Ellsworth rushed to the window and shook hands with him, uttering the memorable words: “Hello, how do you do?” That was about as far as they had got, when Eckener’s voice rose in a roar and several members of the crew came racing from the bridge through the messroom, to disappear aft through the little door leading into the belly of the ship. Before we knew what was happening, jets of water were spouting through the hoses, the canvas anchors came flying in, the fur-capped heads vanished from the windows and we had decamped into the air, leaving the startled occupants of the boat to crane their necks and gape after us." (340)

The absurdity of the meeting turning into a mere handshake is even more significant given the two men’s previous common history as well as the public’s awareness of said history, as explained by Koestler himself. As it happens, Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and Umberto Nobile “had been the first to fly over the Pole in the Norge, in 1926” (339). Yet, their relationship was more complex than what one could call a friendship based on common adventures:

"After that expedition, Amundsen and Nobile had quarrelled bitterly. Two years later Nobile set out on his own, on the ill-prepared and ill-fated Italia voyage, undertaken for Mussolini’s greater glory. The Italia crashed on the ice; Amundsen flew from Spitzbergen to save his enemy’s life and also perished; but Nobile was saved. Now Ellsworth was on board with us, and Nobile was on board the Malygin – which gave this arctic rendezvous of the surviving members of the trio an added intimate touch – the kind of tragic piquancy which the public likes." (339)

That two such men had to meet under the conditions explained above certainly warrants Michael Scammell’s (2009) labeling the meeting and the rest of the journey an “anticlimax” (74).

Anticlimax or not, the journey itself, as a whole, arguably left a strong and lasting impression at least on the less weathered participants of the expedition, like Commander Smith, and Koestler himself:

"The experience is one of continuous fascination. When night falls it brings no darkness; merely twilight, which completely upsets our normal routine of life. And then there is the time chaos aboard the ship. Everybody’s watch is telling different time – some middle European, some Greenwich, some suntime. […] Nobody seems to think of sleep, all are so thrilled by this great adventure." (Koestler 1931b, 2)

Besides fascinating sights, this was further solidified by the conditions themselves. Although Koestler (1931a) asserted that “the northern voyage required few romantic privations” (3), he also mentioned “a lack of water for washing” (3) in the same news dispatch, he added elsewhere that while “[i]n the ship’s salon the temperature [was] comfortable” (Koestler 1931b, 2), this was hardly true for the rest: “our cabins [were] positively icy. Those furlined sleeping jackets which at the beginning of the voyage were such a grotesque encumbrance [became] one of heaven’s finest blessings. The cold compel[led] us to keep the windows shut” (2).

While Koestler did not write in much detail about these two Americans, they nevertheless belong to the few whom he mentioned by name at all, both in his dispatches and in his autobiography. Especially since the ship was filled with luminaries of various nationalities:

"[the crew was] an international Who’s Who of the leading polar experts of the day. The scientific director was a Russian, Professor R. L. Samoilovich. [sic] […] He was accompanied by two other countrymen, Professor P. A. Moltschanoff [sic] and a Mr. Asberg, a radio operator […] A meteorologist, a physicist, and two aerial photographers made up the German team. From America there were Lieutenant Commander E. H. (“Iceberg”) Smith […] and Lincoln Ellsworth […] The Swedish Hydrographic Office sent a man to make magnetic observations. And there were others, too, including a biologist-physician." (Vaeth 1958, 113)

While J. Gordon Vaeth’s (1958) list is far from complete, since he focuses only on polar explorers and scientists (and he does not even list all of those), even this incomplete enumeration includes eleven people of four nationalities. The complete list comprised “[t]he airship’s crew, thirty strong” (McCannon 2003, 422), all German, plus “thirteen scientists, two cameramen, and one journalist (none other than Arthur Koestler)” (422). Koestler (1952) himself mentions a significantly higher number: “There were 56 men on board-the regular crew of forty and sixteen members of the expedition” (325). He presumably based his calculations on the airship’s standard crew of forty plus captain (McCannon 2003, 411), but a smaller crew operated the ship during this fight (422).

It seems at least interesting, and potentially of importance, that of such an illustrious and numerous group, so much of Koestler’s attention was focused on these two Americans. While this may simply be considered retrospective projection on his part, after all, he wrote this volume of his biography, Arrow in the Blue (1952), completely in the US, starting work on February 6, 1951 (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 172), already on Island Farm, and finalizing “the proofs of his autobiography on the twenty-fifth floor of the St. Moritz Hotel in New York” (Scammell 2009, 403) after having found a tenant for the property. Yet, this is probably not the case, given that Koestler’s news dispatches from 1931, as shown above, paint a virtually identical picture. A much more likely reason is that Koestler did not seem to get on well with most of the others on board. As he himself explained, although he “had originally invited Samoilowich [sic] and the other Russians [to the pub crawl in Berlin] […] they had politely declined” (Koestler 1952, 328), and during the flight their relationship changed from a polite refusal to a much more hostile state. Having published the Russian wireless-operator’s derogatory remarks about Estonia in one of his dispatches, the operator reprimanded him, “turned his back, and during the whole flight never spoke to [him] again” (329), later having “difficulties with the other Russians too” (329) leading to the Soviet polar explorer Rudolf Samoylovich choosing the same strategy. The scientist “remark[ed] about [an article he did not like] in an apparently offhand manner” (329), yet that seemingly casual comment was, in fact “about the last remark he ever addressed to [Koestler]” (329). While Koestler wrote enthusiastic news reports about the reception the Soviets organized for the Graf Zeppelin, and many more such pages in the first book published solely under his name, Von weissen Nächten und roten Tagen (1934), on board the airship, at least, it was visibly the Americans he befriended, not the Soviets. And, except for the captain himself, Koestler seems to have had a very similar experience with the Germans on board, as well: “German professors are never exactly a cosy lot; and as they were either Nazi, or reactionary to the marrow, they and the Russians displayed a mutual distrust veiled by stiff academic courtesy” (Koestler 1952, 338). What Koestler did not emphasize at this point is that, his remark about the Russians applied to himself just as much. That he had his own reservations about the German members to some extent was also a result of his burgeoning communism. In his own words: “[t]hough I only became a card-carrying member of the Communist Party five months later, I was already sufficiently advanced in that direction to look forward to my first contact with the Soviet land as the climax of the whole expedition” (328). Just as importantly, he not only listed himself in his enumeration of those on board the airship as “Hungarian-born Palestinian” (326), but, in fact, he had literally tried to convince Franz Ullstein, the owner and manager of his newspaper, to support his idea to “establish a colony of the future Jewish State in the arctic” (319). A position that, albeit for different reasons, certainly could not have been popular with either the Russian or the Germans on board. It thus seems rather logical to claim that during this truly memorable and unique experience, Koestler had only the two Americans for company.

Koestler and Hughes in Turkmenistan

His second noteworthy meeting with an American before his first visit to the country came approximately a year after his arctic trip: he spent several weeks with Langston Hughes in the Soviet Union. Koestler himself stayed for roughly a year in the country, between July 31, 1932 (Scammell 2009, 87) and the late summer or early fall of the following year (cf. 100, 104), thus only a portion of his sojourn was shared with the poet. Their meeting was, in fact, the result of a chance encounter in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan (a constituent republic of the USSR at that time), under less-than-ideal conditions. In Koestler’s own words:

"The capital of Turkmenistan had no hotel. The Station G. P. U. of Ashkhabad [sic] billeted me on the dom sovietov – the so-called Soviet House, which serves as a hostel for visiting officials. I was given a room which had an iron bed and no other furniture, and was rather like a prison cell. It smelt of the latrine across the corridor, which was blocked and permanently overflowing. […] I lay down on the iron bed and felt forsaken by God in a godforsaken country. […] As I lay on the sheetless bed, enveloped by gloom and stench, counting the familiar stains on the wall which crushed bed-bugs leave behind, I heard the sound of a gramophone in the next room. The record was cracked, and it played the then popular tear-jerker sung by Sophie Tucker, “My Yiddishe Momma.” It sounded eerie in the dom sovietov of Ashkhabad, and I got up to find out who my neighbour was. I knocked at his door and found a young American Negro squatting in front of a portable gramophone in a bare room similar to mine. He turned out to be the poet Langston Hughes, whose “Shoeshine Boy” I had read in Berlin and greatly admired. It was difficult not to say “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”" (Koestler 1954, 111)

Hughes asked him in. “So jazz it was – and that was the end of writing for the evening. I played half of my records,” he added (Hughes [1956] 1964, 113). Listening to music and chatting “over camel sausage and vodka” (Scammell 2009, 93), they soon “discovered they were […] on similar missions, though with different agendas and different work habits” (93). This difference in work ethic proved crucial. As Hughes ([1956] 1964) explained:

"When I told him I was a writer too, he asked what material I had gathered in Ashkhabad. I was ashamed to tell him, “Nothing.” He had many questions about the city, but I was of little help.
     “No matter,” he said, “we’ll start digging up facts together tomorrow. A writer must write.”
So it was Koestler, really, who started me to work in Ashkhabad. He wasn’t happy unless he was doing something useful – if happy then. Even listening to music, Koestler would be thinking about work. But he spoke English – and I was glad to find somebody in the Kara Kum Desert who did. Together for weeks we tracked down what happened in Soviet Asia." (113-14)

In fact, Koestler’s influence went further than that he “[s]hamed [Hughes] into action” (114): he organized Hughes’ visitors into “a sort of impromptu international writers’ brigade, with Koestler as its unofficial leader” (Scammell 2009, 94), going so far as to invent and organize a packed and varied program for himself, Hughes and the others, Koestler even turning into an interpreter: “[t]hey were accompanied by the president of the Turkmenian Writers’ Union, Sha’arieh Kikilov, who translated from Turkmen into Russian for Koestler, who then translated everything into English for Hughes” (94). Koestler and Hughes, sometimes on their own, sometimes with Kikilov and others, went through a whole range of memorable adventures, spending weeks together in Ashgabat, Merv (Hughes [1956] 1964, 117-26), Permetyab (126-31), Bokhara (131-38), and Tashkent (142-43), with Hughes frequently relying on Koestler’s notes, rather than his own (which he mostly lacked) for his own writing: “Always, if he had any notes I wanted, Koestler would share them with me – which saved me a good deal of work” (133).

That Koestler’s presence was hugely influential for Langston Hughes seems clear even from the latter’s remarks in his autobiography, cited above. Yet, this influence arguably goes even beyond what the roles of translator, embodied bad conscience and program manager recalled by Hughes imply. As Letitia Guran (2017) argues, Langston Hughes not simply recalls the weeks he spent with Koestler in Turkmenistan in that book, I Wonder as I Wander (1956): on the contrary, “the African American poet frames the first part of his 1956 memoir as a dialogue over time with Koestler” (Guran 2017, 145), thereby establishing “a self-reflective frame in which Hughes uses Koestler as a device to address some of the disturbing critiques of Soviet practices” (151). This central, structuring role, as Guran further explains, is especially clear in comparison with Hughes’ earlier reportage of his soviet journey, A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia (1934), where “he was not mentioned at all” (Guran 2017, 157). It is primarily as a result of this comparison that it becomes apparent that in the more recent one of the two texts, “Koestler’s voice adds a level of ideological awareness and insight” (151) lacking in Hughes’ first version of his stay in Turkmenistan.

Hughes’s changing description of his visit to the Turkmen SSR is, in fact, not unlike Koestler’s own. In the very same year when A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia was published in English by the Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR in Moscow and Leningrad, Koestler’s Von weißen Nächten und roten Tagen: 12 Reportagen aus den Sowjet-Peripherien appeared in German in Kharkov, under the auspices of the Ukrainian State Publishing Agency of the USSR’s National Minorities. Just like Hughes, Koestler revisited the story of their stay in Turkmenistan in a memoir published much later, and, in both cases, this happened in a period of their lives in which they were no longer as enamored with the Soviet Union as at the time of their visit. Koestler’s new version appeared in 1954 as a part of the second volume of his autobiography, The Invisible Writing.

Yet, while Koestler’s soviet-published reportage of Soviet Central Asia is also clearly propagandistic, with its author doing “everything he could to deny the evidence of his own eyes” (Scammell 2009, 97), Hughes apparently correctly remembered him as the more critical and realistic of the two of them, at least in terms of their assessments of the situation, already at that point. However hard Koestler tried to focus on the future and to dismiss the far from perfect conditions of the journey, he could neither completely ignore nor efficiently suppress his critical faculties. “Unable to avoid all mention of the colossal inefficiencies he had experienced or the squalor he had witnessed, he remained selective in the failings he chose to describe, treating them with a detached humor he had rarely been able to muster on the road” (98). Nevertheless, his honest attempt to focus on what worked, and downplay what did not, proved insufficient: the book “still wasn’t good enough for his Soviet hosts” and several of those publishing houses that “had given him generous ruble payments in advance” rejected his book as too critical (98). The version that eventually got published in Kharkov was severely “shortened and censored” (98). Yet, even this mutilated and watered-down text was realistic enough that, albeit with some critical remarks and many additions, he could quote pages after pages of the text verbatim in his anti-communist 1954 version of the journey in The Invisible Writing.

Yet, all this is not to suggest that Koestler’s and Hughes’ relationship was thoroughly imbalanced or even one-sided, with only the former influencing the latter, or the former being the more mature of the two. On the contrary, one should not overlook Hughes’ importance for Koestler, either. The very fact that their weeks spent together features eminently in both respective biographies is significant in itself. Besides, Koestler’s text emphasizes its author’s approval of Hughes’ poetry, as well as his familiarity with said poetry predating their chance encounter. This is how he introduces him when he appears for the first time in The Invisible Writing: “He turned out to be the poet Langston Hughes, whose ‘Shoeshine Boy’ I had read in Berlin and greatly admired” (Koestler 1954, 111).2 Cynthia Koestler, his third and last wife, in their co-authored biography, Stranger on the Square, notes that “[p]erhaps because of their contrasting characters, there was an affinity between the two men” (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 161), and while they certainly did not keep in close touch, the two of them met briefly again in 1948 in Los Angeles (Scammell 2009, 322), and Koestler also “attended a PEN reception in honor of Langston Hughes” in 1952 in New York, shortly after having sold his private island, as one of his last actions before moving back to Europe (403).

As far as retrospective assessments of the two writers’ acquaintance are concerned, two sources come to mind, both of them Hungarian. Mihály Szívós (2006) emphasizes that “the literary importance of Koestler’s journey is partially to be found in the fact that it is at this point that Koestler’s writing technique starts to emerge”3 (45; my translation), and while Szívós primarily calls attention to the influence of the genre of the travelogue on Koestler’s oeuvre, he also emphasizes the potential effect contemporary writers encountered during the journey, alongside his readings in Russian, could have likewise had:

"Since he manages to learn some Russian, his further, more thorough, familiarization with the works of Russian classics and contemporary Soviet writers can be dated, at the latest, to this period. He also could meet some of these contemporaries in person during the journey. His knowledge has been further broadened by his spending his time with the American writer, Langston Hughes, during part of his tour of the smaller soviet republics in Asia."4 (44-45; my translation)

Tamás Staller (2006) goes even further than Szívós when he claims: “Koestler had a very wide circle of friends. As a matter of fact, all of his periods, thus also the thirties, had their own primary bosom friend. [For the 30s] This was Langston Hughes”5 (27; my translation). And while Staller does not explain or support his claim, and he is almost certainly wrong in categorizing Hughes as the friend of the 1930s in Koestler’s life, it is noteworthy that he shares Mihály Szívós’ (2006) position, considering the two authors’ acquaintance important and consequential.

Koestler’s Residence in the United States: The Conditions and their Effect on Koestler’s View of the United States

The above ominous encounters in rather unusual locations notwithstanding, as mentioned above, Koestler gathered most of his experience with Americans and the United States in the early 1950s, and to a lesser extent in the 1960s. Focusing here on the earlier period only, it is important to mention that Koestler’s decision to move to the United States was consistent with his views at the time, and all subsequent events only further strengthened his convictions. In other words, contrary to the impression that descriptions of the move by Edward Saunders (2017, 94), Iain Hamilton (1982, 211) and even Koestler himself (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 98-100) might bring, the change of continents was the result of a longer period of contemplation. Albeit buying the property in the middle of the Delaware River itself may have indeed been an impulsive decision, as early as 1947, Koestler’s view of the United States and American politics was significantly more positive than that of many European intellectuals at the time:

"Koestler was ahead of most of his left-wing friends in realizing that the best American intellectuals and American statesmen had a firmer grasp of global politics and of the Soviet menace than did their European counterparts. The Labour government’s lukewarm socialism at home and timid reluctance to assume the leadership of Western Europe in its foreign policy had disillusioned him with Britain, and he put little stock in the ability of France or Italy to withstand the blandishments of communism on their own. [In his opinion,] The United States was Europe’s best hope – and, not coincidentally, the best hope of the Jews in Palestine." (Scammell 2009, 314)

Besides, it made complete sense to want to move to a country where some of his recent books were received much more positively than in the UK. This was certainly true of his Zionist novel, Thieves in the Night (1946) (cf. Vernyik 2016a, 2016b), and his second book on Palestine during the British mandate, Promise and Fulfilment, published in 1949, was received just as negatively in Britain, if not worse:

"Poor K is most depressed about having had such bitchy reviews in English papers, it seems to him they are full of venom, which indeed they mostly are, because the English have such a bad conscience about Palestine and simply won’t admit it. As a result, K is more violently anti-English than ever." (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 116)

Probably even more importantly, Koestler was more than just an author with a good reception in the US. He was arguably much more of a celebrity over there than in Europe, at the very least in the late 1940s:

"He traveled over on the Queen Mary in March 1948, finding congenial dinner companions in the Hungarian-American film director George Cukor and Edwin Knopf of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Straight off the boat he was swept up into a round of press conferences, interviews, lunches, dinners, and cocktail parties that made it difficult for him to keep his balance. As A. D. Peters had warned a year earlier, he was much more famous and influential in America than he could possibly imagine. That day’s “Celebrity Bulletin” for the New York press nominated him “Celebrity of the Day,” ahead of Clark Gable, Admiral Byrd, Dizzy Gillespie, and Gracie Fields." (Scammell 2009, 315)

While this earlier visit in 1948 had its ups and downs, and not everything went seamlessly, Koestler

"felt he had achieved what he set out to do despite the machinations of his conservative hosts. He had bolstered the anti-Stalinist intellectuals of the left, added his weight to those who were advocating a more active, anti-Communist U.S. foreign policy, and satisfied his curiosity about a country that was exercising a stronger and stronger pull on his imagination." (324)

In fact, it is arguable that the seed of Koestler’s decision to move countries was already planted at this point. Or in Michael Scammell’s words: “Despite many reservations, his mind was almost made up. He was sure he would return to America soon, perhaps to stay” (324). That Koestler was progressively more and more convinced that another major war was both inevitable and likely to happen in the near future only made him entertain this thought even more seriously. As Mamaine Koestler (1985) put it in a letter of hers: “He says, war probably autumn 1951 or soon after, so he would rather go to the States as he couldn’t do anything here anyway – said he thought California perhaps best, if not too cut off there” (128).

Once Koestler and his wife did move to the US, however, their experience was far from uncontroversially positive. In fact, having moved countries in autumn 1950, as early as April 5, 1951, Koestler already reached the point where his wife could write to her sister that she was “happy to say that he [was] getting absolutely fed up with being in America and [was] pining to come to Europe” (179-80). Less than two months later Koestler even asked her what she thought “of the idea that [they] should sell the house (this house) for a large sum, convert the money into pounds, and then either get a house in England […] or go and live in Bermuda” (188). While Koestler’s American residence lasted for almost another year, until April 1952, as mentioned above, he nevertheless continued to grow progressively more critical of the country and its inhabitants as I am to show below.

The reasons for this were manifold. The most tangible and down-to-earth reason had to with Koestler’s finances. At first sight, his property seemed like a dream come true, and in some ways seeing it as such was certainly no illusion:

"Island Farm was set in the middle of the Delaware River, separated from the “mainland” by a narrow suspension bridge. The Pennsylvania Dutch house was more mansion than farmhouse, with broad porches overlooking the river, an airy solarium, eight bedrooms, a huge dining room with exposed beams, and a walk-in fireplace. There were seven acres of gardens, an avenue of fruit trees running from bridge to house, lofty oaks and maples for shade, broad lawns, flower gardens, a rose bower, a large barn, poultry sheds, and a hundred acres of mostly farmland." (Scammell 2009, 378)

This level of luxury, however, was far beyond what Koestler could afford, at least in the United States. In fact, his wife noticed at least some of this problem already at the point when she first put her feet on the island, in January 1951:

"The only insuperable problem is servants. We just can’t afford to have one with any regularity, at a dollar an hour.6 However, we have a char – a great big Polish‑American woman – who comes over in her own car three times a week to help with the dirty work. I don’t know yet how much work I’ll have – I imagine quite a lot. But we are going to eat very simply, as we really have absolutely no money left, and on the contrary owe Macmillans the equivalent of £7000,7 and have to get a hell of a lot of things for the house." (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 165)

While this was an early, if desperate, comment on their financial situation, there certainly was no considerable improvement in this respect over the coming months. In March, she had to admit: “K’s book is going well, but we are down to our last dime all the same, as we’ve had to spend so much on the house. It’s too tantalizing to see the shops here and not be able to buy anything” (176). In April, in a similar vein, she had to write this much: “the trouble is that we can’t afford to live here for more than about six months a year, however low a standard of life we maintain – and our standard is much lower here than in France. Life is so expensive here that it is just impossible on books alone” (180; emphasis original). Yet, Koestler’s financial situation was both more complicated and more absurd than his wife’s letters make it sound. As his subsequent wife, and personal secretary at the time of his stay in the US, Cynthia Koestler explains, he did have some wealth, but he had no means to access it: “He had failed to get permission from the Bank of England to transfer his money abroad. Thus he was hard up in the two countries where he had chosen to live – France and America – and well off in England” (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 134). Whatever the source of his lack of funds may have been though, financial hardship was certainly amongst the reasons Koestler was unable to grow fond of living in the United States.

Another, related, factor was the constant stress, discomfort and tension running an understaffed island meant for a mere three people and a rather unreliable paid helper. “Koestler’s Walter Mitty imagination didn’t stretch to who would clean the rooms, farm the land, tend the seven acres of lawn and gardens, or care for the acres of woodland that surrounded the property” (Scammell 2009, 378-79). There were simply too many things to manage concurrently. To quote Mamaine Koestler (1985) again:

"This is quite a big house, and it is a hell of a job to keep it moderately clean and do the cooking, washing up, laundry, ironing, mending and all K’s correspondence, as well as buying the basic furniture, etc., which we have by no means done yet. […] K has been in a rotten mood lately, owing to not having been able to work for so long, I suppose, and I keep doing awfully unpractical things for which I curse myself, so life has been a considerable strain." (168-69).

Besides, the house itself was not the only responsibility tending to an island meant. Their efforts, though at times desperate, were frequently not up to par with the challenge they faced:

"Giant weeds, surging with life and vigour, had suffocated the rhododendrons in a long bed which bordered the drive. Arthur was furious when he saw the devastation. How could Mamaine allow such a thing to happen – the flowers were her domain? He brooded about it and there was no way of placating him. His mood was spoilt and, once spoilt, could not be changed. Later I saw Mamaine weeding a rose bed, the soil harsh and unyielding. To get anywhere needed a lot of strength. She gave an impatient tug at a weed in a fit of exasperation which seemed to express her frustration at living in a land so alien to her." (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 118)

What was perhaps the lowest point in terms of the psychological effects of the strain of unmanageable chores arrived surprisingly early, already in January 1951. The event is once again best conveyed in Mamaine Koestler’s (1985) words:

"I am working fearfully hard here […] I should think I have written about thirty letters today for K. I never get through my work, and K is in a rotten mood as a result of living in such a disturbed environment for so long. The other day when Agnes [a guest] and he and I were having dinner in the kitchen he suddenly worked himself up into a rage and stampeded about knocking things over (having knocked over the kitchen table and bespattered us all with wine). Agnes and I spent the rest of the evening mopping up wine, whisky, brandy, blood, glass and china; K also broke a couple of chairs and a lamp, and almost broke his foot kicking at things, so he is now limping about. He has hardly spoken to me since, i.e. for two days; I am hoping this state of affairs will not last long." (171)

While no other scene of such seriousness is known to have occurred, and the situation did improve somewhat over time, Koestler was talking with Mamaine about “the difficulty of living [t]here” (188) even in late May, and Mamaine herself admitted that she “mostly just vegetate[d], working in the house and garden” (189). Two months later they left for a visit in Europe. Arthur Koestler returned to the US only several months later, and Mamaine never did.

A further relevant factor negatively influencing Koestler’s perception of his stay was his health and the health of those around him. As Michael Scammell (2009) convincingly argues, “[e]ven by Koestler’s standards, his demented conduct in the spring and summer of 1951 was excessive. The alcohol certainly had something to do with it, but it appears he was clinically sick, with a bad case of manic depression” (392). Besides this, he also had at least one ulcer attack (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 179), and in the last phase of his stay on the island, when he was basically alone when not entertaining guests, he fell sick again: “He contracted a painful kidney stone, which he convinced himself was psychosomatic in origin, taking megadoses of morphine until he was able to pass it after an agonizing ten days” (Scammell 2009, 399).

While at this point he was already “truly alone for the first time in years” (399), earlier, when her soon-to-be ex-wife and future wife were still staying with him, their health was also far from perfect. Mamaine Koestler had had asthma since age seven (Goodman 1985, 11), and in 1945, when she was only twenty-nine, she was “invalided out of her job at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and she was suffering from ‘anxiety neurosis.’ […] The truth was that her asthma had become worse and she needed rest. Never physically strong, she found that too much excitement and strain invariably had physical repercussions for her” (Scammell 2009, 260). In the context of the above description of the Koestlers’ stay on Island Farm in 1951, this diagnosis rather ominously foreshadowed Mamaine’s state of health in that period. In fact, she fell ill already a month after her arrival there (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 172), spending most of February in bed (174), with the then‑secretary Cynthia on her arrival from the UK finding “Mamaine […] in bed with bronchitis” (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 111). She did feel “rather weak and wobbly” (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 175) at least for some time in March, then early in April, her “laryngitis turned into one of those coughs which one can’t get rid of and [she] had to spend two or three days in bed and have some penicillin” (179). Subsequently, these few days turned into a week (180), getting progressively worse to the point where Koestler decided to take action, even if not a successful one:

"Back via Baltimore, where we went to see a doctor friend of Agnes at the Johns Hopkins hospital, with a view to arranging a check-up, as K is worried about my health, which is very bad these days. He turned out to be a Pavlovian and was only interested in showing K his paper on the effects of alcohol on sexual potency. I was paralysed with fear, as doctors and hospitals have this effect on me these days; however, this doc. was not the right one (being a psychiatrist) so I shall have to go again." (182)

In fact, Koestler’s best attempts notwithstanding, there was no noticeable improvement, or at least not in the long term. On April 25, Mamaine Koestler once again sent only bad news about her health to her sister: “My chest is rotten these days, but rotten; it is the spring, no doubt” (185), and while her health may seem to have improved significantly in May and June 1951, based on a lack of any reference in her published correspondence to ill health, the situation was, in fact, much direr. In general, Mamaine’s state was very much related to the house, its location and the local climate: “[i]t didn’t help that the big, dust-laden house, with its mildew and smoky fires, was […] located by a damp river – in fact in the middle of it – causing Mamaine to suffer from colds, bronchitis, and flu, even after spring brought warmer weather” (Scammell 2009, 394). Koestler’s insistence on check-ups at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, even when not abused for showcasing research results to Koestler, was not as helpful as it could have been: “they found little wrong with her except a supposed allergy to dogs, a fine thing to suffer from given Koestler’s preference for dogs over humans” (395). Yet Mamaine had much more serious problems than an allergy to dogs. After their separation and her return to London, Koestler:

"asked a Hungarian doctor friend, Tibor Csato, to take charge of Mamaine’s medical care, and after a battery of tests Csato informed her that her liver and gallbladder were barely functioning, her cholesterol was sky high, and she was suffering from latent jaundice, which explained her recurrent bouts of nausea and inability to put on weight. Though this would intensify her asthma, he recommended a protein-heavy diet and no alcohol for a year before tackling the asthma proper." (396)

With Mamaine, in fact, as Csató’s diagnosis showed, having been seriously ill throughout her stay in the US, Koestler struggling in turn with bouts of depression, ulcers and a kidney stone, the third inhabitant, Cynthia may seem to have been positively bursting with health, yet this would also be an illusion, and true only in comparison. As she herself explained:

"It was great fun working away in the hot sun and we soon acquired healthy‑looking tans. In bed at night I felt less healthy as I tried to keep the hayfever at bay; it was a bore, but it certainly would not keep me away from such pleasures in life as grass-raking. […] At night my hayfever kept me awake and during the day the hayfever pills made me sleepy. One day as Arthur dictated, walking back and forth, I yielded to the temptation of closing my eyes when his back was turned, quickly opening them when he turned round again. After a few minutes he looked at me and said in a quiet, laconic voice: “You know, to dictate one’s autobiography to someone who is falling asleep is rather putting off.” I was shattered. Black with guilt, I mumbled something like, “I promise I won’t do it again,” but I cannot swear that I kept my promise." (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 118, 123)

While Cynthia’s allergy is certainly a form of mild discomfort compared to the serious ailments of the Koestlers, and especially those of Mamaine, it nevertheless also contributed to an overstrung atmosphere. On April 5, 1951, for example, Mamaine noted: “He now has a phobia against poor Cynthia and all his irritability is directed against her” (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 179).

Perhaps even more important than the struggles of their material existence, the earlier celestial reception in 1948 notwithstanding, Koestler realized early on that navigating American social and public life differed significantly from what he was used to in Britain or on the continent, and surmounting its challenges was much harder than he had expected it to be. Especially so, given that Koestler’s political position at the time was virtually incompatible with the opinions held by most, if not all, major political players. In Michael Scammell’s (2009) words:

"Koestler was caught between two stools, irremediably stuck between left and right. The left in both Europe and America ignored his claims to still be a socialist and accused him of selling out to the right. The right […] refused to accept him as one of their own because they did accept his claims to be a socialist. The liberals were wrong and the conservatives were right about his fundamental beliefs. Koestler was undoubtedly a man of the left, but, given the vehemence and strength of his anti-communism, he had ended up in a sort of no-man’s land with very few sympathizers for company." (385)

Koestler’s position, being an anti-communist who is not, at the same time, a conservative, and even much less a right-wing radical, was not a frequent one, or even an easily available one in the United States of the early 1950s.

His stance of a politically active anti-communist at a time when “the prevailing anti‑Communist trend then sweeping America” was McCarthyism (Saunders 2017, 87) meant that Koestler was instantly (mis)identified by liberals and leftists as a supporter of the hardline anti-communism of the Republican mainstream. “McCarthy’s attempt to purge American society of ‘Communists,’” as Budd Schulberg tried to explain to Koestler, “was driving liberals towards sympathy with the ‘persecuted’ Communist Party” (Cesarani 1999, 384) and forced neutrals, like Eva Striker, to distance themselves from Koestler (Saunders 2017, 87). Of course, Koestler’s anti-communism did, certainly, attract the hardline right-wing, but with those Koestler himself felt ill-at-ease. As Mamaine Koestler (1985) put it: “‘political men’ […] like K, start by being leftists for many years, then in despair at the woolly-mindedness of the leftists swing towards the right and pin their last hopes on liberalizing the rightists” (177-78).

In fact, albeit Mamaine insisted in the same latter that “K [was] fully aware of the hopelessness of this undertaking” (178), his actions come across as someone much more naïve than that, and either unaware of, or unwilling to accept, the political realities of the period. When “Schulberg reproached Koestler with underestimating the threat posed by McCarthy” (Cesarani 1999, 383) he was probably not far from the truth. Or, at the very least, Schulberg’s opinion would help explain Koestler’s distinctly unrealistic discussion with the McCarthyist Senator, Ralph Owen Brewster:

"Dinner NY with Bob Morris and Senator and Mrs Brewster. K spoke of the bad impression made in Europe by McCarthy and said a change of emphasis and a formulation on McC’s part would be of great value in counteracting this. He suggested that an amnesty should be granted to the former Communists who have made a full avowal, whatever crimes they had committed for the CP (short of murder, which they’d hardly confess anyway). The Senator said he wasn’t much interested in Europe but saw K’s point, especially where American liberals were concerned. He said, could he bring McC[arthy] down to our island for a talk with K; K said, yes, if we also get some other European intellectuals so as not to leave him as sole spokesman for Europe." (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 177)

Unfortunately, this meeting between a select group of European intellectuals and Joseph McCarthy never materialized (Scammell 2009, 384). Nevertheless, Koestler’s ability to seriously entertain the thought of convincing Joseph McCarthy, the very “symbol of the anti-Communist persuasion” (Griffith [1970] 1987, 74), or his inner circle, for that matter, was both “a thankless undertaking” (Scammell 2009, 384) and probably little else than an illusion (384).

Perhaps just as importantly, he seems to have also completely missed, or decided to ignore, the massive support radical measures against those seen as Communists or fellow‑travelers had at the time: “[t]he Senate read the results of the 1950 elections and saw in them a reflection of its own worst fears. It seemed as though from one end of the country to the other, candidates for office were denouncing their opponents for being ‘soft on communism,’ for countenancing Reds in government, and indeed for being themselves dupes, fellow travelers, and ‘pinks’” (Griffith [1970] 1987, 122). As already hinted at above, the political environment was mostly deaf or hostile to the existence of shades and, it seems, preferred to envision everything in binary oppositions. Or, in other words, not only was Koestler’s anti-communism an incompatible variety with the prevailing McCarthyism, but he may have also failed to recognize this fact, or at least the full extent and import of these ideological differences. As Jonathan Michaels (2017) explains:

"McCarthyism, far from being a simple fear of communism, was tied to a group of associated agendas, the two most prominent being a drive to halt and reverse the momentum of the New Deal paired with an effort to suppress unions. The means to these goals was a campaign of suppression that, while most obviously aimed at Communists, was accompanied by a rhetoric that accused anybody on the political left of being, if not an actual Communist, then a tool, witting or unwitting, of Communists." (14-15)

Budd Schulberg, apparently much more deeply aware of the complexities of American politics than Koestler, may have correctly warned Koestler that he should have “look[ed] harder at American society: it was the opposition to McCarthy that made America a strong, vibrant democracy” (Cesarani 1999, 384). Or, in Michael Scammell’s (2009) words: “Koestler’s vaunted ability to parachute into a country, take its pulse, and write cogently about it may have served him well in Europe, but it didn’t work so well in America” (389).

At the same time, there is an alternative explanation as well. While it is indeed doubtful if Koestler was at all aware of McCarthyism’s “associated agendas” (Michaels 2017, 14) or that “[i]n domestic affairs the anti-Communist persuasion often found expression in the mindless identification of all social change with communism” (Griffith [1970] 1987, 31), Mamaine Koestler (1985) argued that Koestler’s “urge to do something [made] him take it on without hope of success” (178). This opinion, in fact, resonates well with Edward Saunders’ (2017) interpretation of Koestler’s character. For him, Koestler was “all for taking sides,” unable to stay neutral (87) or inactive.

One way or another, Koestler’s active and impatient anti-communism, combined with his actual views being to the left of American anti-communists, did not help him in terms of his social life. Or, more precisely, it did not allow him to have the social life he could have had had he been either more politically cautious, or more straightforwardly McCarthyist in his views. He certainly did not lack company as such. Albeit staying on an island, “Koestler himself was rarely alone. When not working, he couldn’t bear to be without company even for a moment. Weekend after weekend he filled Island Farm with guests from New York, Washington, Princeton, France, England, Germany, and, when all else failed, from surrounding Bucks County” (Scammell 2009, 392). Yet, even though Bucks County, “located in the so-called genius belt of America, had been a magnet for writers, painters, and theater people since the Depression” (390) it did not provide Koestler with too much company. In fact, most of the locals “were radical socialists close to the Hiss circle, who automatically shunned Koestler as a turncoat, while the many local show-business luminaries such as George S. Kaufman, Oscar Hammerstein, Moss Hart, S. J. Perelman, and Dorothy Parker were uninterested in politics and (with the signal exception of [Budd] Schulberg) largely ignored him” (390).

The combined effect of all of these conditions explains rather well the change in Koestler’s opinion from a critically positive and appreciative position to a negative and pessimistic one during this period. While I do not claim that no other factors may have contributed to this distinctly palpable deterioration of his assessment of the United States, being politically naïve and isolated (both strictly in an American context), suffering from health problems, running an understaffed household, and lacking sufficient funds to support his usual, comfortable and bohemian lifestyle seem rather solid, and potentially central reasons of the change.

America According to Koestler

Leaving aside the tangible change for the worse and its potential reasons in his judgement of life in the United States, Koestler’s published as well as private assessments, as it is to be shown below, converge around a clearly identifiable, and surprisingly limited, number of aspects.

His view of the country’s literary life is unambiguously negative. The number one target of his criticism is the institution of best-seller lists, and especially its influence on writers as well as on the reception of their works:

"The longer I live here the more I get the feeling that there is something radically wrong with literary life in America. I don’t mean the quality of the writers. […] What disturbs me is something different. […] the social climate in this country has made the creation of art into an essentially competitive business. On the bestseller charts, this curse of American literary life, authors are rated like shares on the Stock Exchange. […] If you are a novelist living in this country you may be a saint but you will be unable to resist glancing at the devilish chart to see how you and your friends are doing; and your friends thus automatically turn into competitors." (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 101)

At the same time, he admits that best-seller lists have at least one advantage: they do make literary life lively, even if not necessarily along the lines he would prefer in an ideal situation. Even if “the competitive, commercialised atmosphere in the States […] is very bad for a writer” (140), in comparison, he finds the British situation just as dire, exactly for its lack of competition: “the staleness of the English literary scene is also rather depressing” (140).

Another, directly related element of his criticism of American literary life centers on reviews. Mamaine Koestler (1985), in her letter sent on March 25, 1951, lists several reasons for Koestler no longer feeling satisfied in the United States. She mentions “the idiotic reviews with their completely false standards” (178) as one of them. While her letter does not describe what those “false standards” are supposed to be, Koestler himself is certainly more specific. For him, these standards, at least partially, are shared with those of the best-seller lists: “making literature into a competitive game has a corroding effect on readers, writers, publishers and reviewers alike” (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 101) exactly because this competitiveness means that “publishers, reviewers and editors focus [the writer’s] attention,” and one could add their own attention as well, “consciously or unconsciously – on immediate success here and now” (101).

Besides best-seller lists, reviewers, publishers and editors focusing too much on quantitative success, another one of Koestler’s criticisms has to do with the average American not being a reader. Cynthia Koestler remarks, recalling a train journey: “Arthur examined the specimens of American wildlife in our carriage. Not a single person was reading, he exclaimed, surprised, nor was anyone looking out of the window at the landscape. I gazed around: some passengers looked bored, others were wrapped up in their own private worries” (119–20). Mamaine Koestler (1985) mentions a similar, even if less explicitly framed, incident involving the above mentioned McCarthyist senator, in a letter sent on March 25, 1951: “Arthur and I had dinner with one of the Senators who are introducing his Bill; this one is called Sen. Brewster […] obviously quite a nice chap and intelligent as far as they go, but oh how many miles between him and us, we both felt. He remarked that the only member of his household who had read any of K’s books was his gardener, who has read Darkness at Noon” (177). While Koestler’s pride may have been, indeed, hurt and/or shocked as a public figure that Brewster had “only a vague idea who Koestler was” (Scammell 2009, 384), his wife’s remarks to her sister seem to rather suggest that their shock has to do with the senator not being a reader, or at least not enough to know a major name in political fiction.

Beyond aspects of cultural life, Koestler is also critical of human relationships in the United States. He finds people distant, unapproachable and superficial:

"No friendship, no social cohesion. Everybody walks in his portable glass case, wrapped up in his own problems, miseries, ambitions. They dine out but don’t listen to what everybody else says (unless it is an anecdote or gossip thus can be repeated); continuous conversation doesn’t exist, there is no flow, no exchange, only a series of jesty remarks." (The Koestler Archive, MS2305, notebook labelled “June 1949 – March ‘51”, October 20, 1950)

In his view, this state of everyone being trapped in his own bubble tends to make many Americans rather unhappy and lonely, at times even if they are in a relationship. Describing a young and affluent couple, he notes: “This young couple, like so many others, friendless, joyless, aimless. They haven’t even had a favourite haunt! Took them […] to Harlem, where they had the time of their lives” (The Koestler Archive, MS2305, notebook labelled “June 1949 – March ‘51”, October 10, 1950). His remark, in the same diary entry, “when they drink he becomes acid, she bitchy” eerily foreshadows George and Martha in Edward Albee’s (1962) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and especially in Mike Nichols’ (1966) adaptation with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (minus the unborn child, but certainly including the emptiness and the alienated alcoholism).8

Affluence and social standing are not helpful factors in coping with this semi-isolation in Koestler’s eyes, either. His description of the upper classes is damning: “The rich – upper Park Av., Waldorf, etc – are in this country really revolting. In Europe they have a tradition – here just money, ostentation, the cruelest, inhuman neurotic patterns; an ∞ snobbery” (The Koestler Archive, MS2305, notebook labelled “June 1949 – March ‘51”, October 10, 1950). In fact, if Koestler’s middle-class career couple easily reminds one of Edward Albee’s play, then his description of the rich seems to have echoes of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (1925) The Great Gatsby. Albeit referring to two specific characters, William E. Cain (2020) could just as well have described the whole milieu in which those characters are moving, claiming: “Wealth has hardened Tom and Daisy. They are careless, heedless, at a secure and indifferent distance from trouble, never facing the necessity to pay attention or minister to others. It is not that they are thoughtless but, rather, that they ‘think in money’” (454).

Yet, even if Koestler sees Americans as trapped in their impenetrable bubbles, staying superficial and inattentive in human interactions, self-centered and egotistic either in a neurotic or a carelessly aggressive manner, this does not make them introverted. In fact, Koestler claims the very opposite: “This is still much more of a pioneer country than the people who live in it realize. It extroverts even the visitor – in these four weeks I have become much heartier, louder, more self-assured. Shyness as a virtue, restraint as a form, are invalidated” (Koestler Archive, MS2305, notebook labelled “June 1949 – March ‘51”, October 20, 1950). While he visibly cannot avoid American ways of hearty outspokenness influencing his own behavior, once he stays for a longer time, unconscious imitation turns into irritation. What is more, he actually links Americans’ seeming inability to truly connect to this overly intensive extroversion in a causal chain: “From the cradle on everything pushes the child to extroversion. Taxi-drivers, liftmen, plumbers talk – no[,] verbiate – like Piaget-children: it is a form of primitive motor-activity (which precedes sensory activity) like the […] worm’s frantic random movements; it is a motor verbiation with no idea of listening, of making contact” (Koestler Archive, MS2305, notebook labelled “June 1949 – March ‘51”, December 24, 1950).

At the same time, criticism and irritation notwithstanding, it is not only a more boisterous way of communicating that Koestler ends up partially imitating. He positively shocks her future wife, and then secretary, Cynthia, when she meets him after months of absence, most of which period Koestler has spent in the United States:

"To my surprise he used the short American “a”, though it sounded strangely un-American. He was wearing a brown leather jacket of the kind that motorbike riders wore. He had a black Cadillac convertible which looked streamlined and graceful compared to his old black Citroen. There were electrical switches to open the windows and to lower the hood. There were gadgets to do everything, he said, except to make mayonnaise." (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 111)

In his leather jacket and fast black car, one cannot help but imagine Koestler as an older, Jewish, wannabe James Dean, even if this is just as much of an anachronism as the previous reference to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Not to mention that Koestler certainly was, in virtually all periods of his life a rebel with a cause, or even more of them simultaneously.)

Koestler’s fascination with American technology is certainly not exclusive to cars. Owning an island, and lacking the necessary staff, he cannot resist making up for manpower by horsepower: “Bought a power tractor to cut the grass with. K spent the entire day doing this at top speed, which he greatly enjoyed” (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 186). His wife, Mamaine, even amongst all the hardships and illnesses keeps singing odes about the modern inventions surrounding them. Some of these are household appliances: “As I write I am doing my washing in the washing machine – a marvelous installation which we acquired with the house” (168) she writes her sister at one time. In another letter, she describes something that might be either electric heating with a thermostat or air conditioning: “The whole house is awfully well heated by a wonderful system which you turn on to whatever temperature you like for day and night, and it automatically regulates itself to these temperatures at the appropriate time” (165). At the same time, their range of equipment certainly extends beyond appliances necessary for running their household. The Koestlers also invest into cutting edge audio equipment, featuring the latest innovations:

"We have a super radio, really incredibly good, and a super gramophone which will play long, medium or quick-playing records – long-playing ones, as you know, have a whole concerto on two sides or less; our radio has a new thing called frequency modulation, which makes the tone simply marvellous – we’ve just been listening to the Tchaikovsky violin concerto played by Heifetz, and it sounded as good as if one were in a concert hall with good acoustics." (167)

Of course, their tight budget, discussed above, certainly acts as a limiting factor in their access to shiny, modern amenities. This is the case even if investment in those amenities to some extent might have counteracted their inability to afford properly staffing at least the house if not the island: “There are so many wonderful things in the shops that all sorts of things one’s never dreamt of become ‘musts’ – I mean gadgets of one sort and another to make life without servants tolerable. And they are all awfully expensive” (173).

Their tight financial situation can be considered beneficial in at least one sense: providing the necessary contrast to recognize the relative affluence of American citizens, compared to the average European. It is not only Koestler’s wife, Mamaine, noticing that “there is such an incredible plenty here that it would take them six years of hard work to get down to a stage which we would regard as luxury” (173). Cynthia notes Koestler himself making a similar comment in the context of their only household help: “The daily had not turned up, he said; her car had broken down. It was normal for dailies to have cars out here, he told me, and just proved how affluent the country was” (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 112). The image of America as the land of plenty is only further solidified by the Koestlers experiencing a phenomenon still relatively unknown in the United Kingdom (Scammell 2009, 380) but already widespread in the US: the supermarket. “Stockton is very pretty, there is a […] very good grocery store where shopping is a pleasure, as you just wheel a barrow round and put everything you want on it and pay as you go out” (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 165).

It is, however, important to stress that Koestler’s view of this affluence is not unambiguously positive. In fact, he is convinced that it makes people, and thus the whole country, at best, inefficient:

"On the way, Arthur complained of the inefficiency of Americans. I [=Cynthia] was astonished. Surely Americans did everything better than anyone else in the world. That was a fallacy, I was informed. They were hopeless and he had come up against this in every field, from builders to ordering furniture and electric lamps." (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 111)

And, at worst, the phenomenon of extreme affluence can have an even stronger effect than making Americans inefficient, leading to stagnation or even paralysis: “Everything in this country is self-defeating: overproduction, overfeeding, overdrinking, oversexing, over psycho-analyzing, etc.” (Koestler Archive, MS2305, notebook labelled “June 1949 – March ‘51”, November 9, 1950).

All in all, Koestler ends up categorizing the United States as a civilization in decline, notwithstanding the illusion of people and country alike bursting at the seams with energy and momentum. In his words,

"[T]his is clearly a civilization in a cul de sac. […] More than ½ of all hospital beds occupied by mentally ill […] Rome’s was a similarly soulless, politically corrupt, everybody-for-himself civilization. It was redeemed by being suffused by the spirit of conquered Greece. But who will redeem this country if Europe gone?" (Koestler Archive, MS2305, notebook labelled “June 1949 – March ‘51”, December 24, 1950)

Yet, perhaps this diary entry sounds more definite and final than it truly is. His position, even if admittedly expressed decades later, seems more ambiguous than damning: “In my political outlook I was staunchly pro-American, but that did not help much to make me like American cooking, or popular culture, or spiritual values” (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 100). And this hesitation, this uncertainty about the hopes of the American civilization is, indeed, documented already in Mamaine Koestler’s diary entry from April 8, 1951: “Re America, K says the question is: is all this crime and corruption a phenomenon of adolescence or of decay? Growing pains or the rot of the moribund?” (Mamaine Koestler 1985, 181). In fact, this question is demonstrably on Koestler’s mind at least repeatedly, and maybe even constantly during their stay in the country. For example, Mamaine’s description of a dinner with John von Neumann on April 29, 1951:

"Bermann Fischer, wife and daughter and v. Neumanns to dinner. […] K says v. N[eumann] is a genius, he is also charming and amusing. K was delighted with the evening; he attempted to discuss his favourite subject, viz., is American crisis sign of puberty or of climacterium? V[on] N[eumann] denied the existence of a crisis except as a place on a curve, said one part of the organism can be senescent, another not; said a civilization is successful when it is doing what it sets out to do, whether or not what it is trying to do is desirable. He also said, quoting Veblen, that in a Puritan country where people are denied normal satisfactions and pleasures, they are driven to seek success, whereas in a Catholic country (e.g. France) they can enjoy themselves without being successful so they don’t have to bother." (184–85)

Besides showcasing John von Neumann’s lucid, well-informed, and significantly different views on the matter, the above quote illustrates both the central importance the question holds for Koestler, as well as his propensity to hold extended intellectual debates about this topic with his guests.

Returning for a moment to Koestler’s claim that he does not appreciate American popular culture, nor the local cuisine, mentioned alongside spiritual values and cooking, a question about his honesty in this matter also arises. Besides the already discussed James Deanesque image, affected American accent and huge black Cadillac, there is more, pertinent not only to Koestler’s view of US popular culture, but also American food. Cynthia has this much to say in their dual autobiography:

"Sometimes we went to Mary’s Diner for a sandwich lunch. Arthur enjoyed these outings like a schoolboy playing truant, albeit with a guilty smile, and he liked to chat with the owner, the cosy Mary. Mamaine, though she gamely participated in the fun, was snooty about Mary’s Diner; such lowbrow forms of entertainment were not for her and she would appear a little sulky – which only enhanced her looks." (Koestler and Koestler 1984, 121)

This description, especially the remark about Koestler enjoying his lunch “with a guilty smile” clearly raises the question if Koestler’s dislike for both the food and the popular culture is truly representative of his opinion or is rather a projection of the opinion he considers to be expected of someone of his stature. This seems all the more likely once his description of his own relationship to the genre of science fiction is juxtaposed to Cynthia Koestler’s portrait of his future husband’s behavior at an American diner, quoted above:

"I had better confess at this point that while I lived in the United States I was a science-fiction addict myself and am still liable to occasional relapses. Reading about space travel, time travel, Martian maidens, robot civilizations and extra-galactic supermen is habit-forming like opium, murder thrillers and yoghourt diets. Few people in this country [= the UK] realize the extent and virulence of this addiction in the United States. According to a recent survey, the average sale of a detective story or a Western thriller in America is four thousand copies; the average sale of a science-fiction novel is six thousand copies, or fifty per cent higher. Every month, six new novels of this type are published in the USA and three large publishing firms specialize exclusively in science-fiction." (Koestler [1953] 1955, 143)

His use of the vocabulary of addiction to describe the fandom of the genre, as well as his own relationship to it, directly mirrors Cynthia’s characterization of the scene in the diner. The same applies to his guilt-ridden enjoyment and its reluctant admission from the expected position of a representative of the intelligentsia.

Conclusion

As it is apparent from the above discussion, Arthur Koestler’s relationship with the United States, its culture and inhabitants is rather complex, at times contradictory, and in some aspects certainly appreciative, even if strongly critical. While clearly such an ambiguous relationship is likely to have multiple sources and thus no article-length study focusing on their origins could hope to be even remotely exhaustive, I hope to have provided at least an introductory overview of the socio-historical context, everyday conditions and notable personalities that may have informed these views.

As mentioned in the introduction, this discussion is going to be continued with an analysis of Koestler’s American characters in a separate article. This is warranted not only because of the already considerable length of the present treatise, but especially by the surprisingly high number of relevant texts to be discussed. In addition, this future study is going to be informed by the findings of the present article, using the literary texts as a testbed for verifying, or potentially modifying, our understanding of Arthur Koestler’s assessment of American culture and society.

 

Works Cited

 

Notes

1 It is interesting to note that Koestler is inconsistent in his description of Smith’s affiliation. In his news dispatch he mentions the Coast Guard Service, whereas in the first volume of his biography published approximate two decades later, he lists him as a member of the US Navy. ↩

2 Koestler’s reference is somewhat cryptic here, and also possibly misplaced. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994) lists no poem entitled “Shoeshine Boy,” nor is there any such short story listed in The Short Stories, Volume 15 of the Collected Works of Langston Hughes. There is also no trace of a work with this title in Volume 5 collecting all his plays or Volume 9 reprinting his essays. The theme of a boy shining shoes appears in his poems “Elevator Boy” and “Porter” both published before their meeting in Ashkhabad. Likewise, the protagonist of one of his short stories, “Slave on the Block,” Luther works “shining shoes for a Greek in Elizabeth” (Hughes [1934] 2002b, 32) before joining the Carraways, but this text appeared in print only after their meeting in Ashkabad, and Hughes actually wrote it during his stay in the Soviet Union (Leach 2004, 86). It is also not impossible that in retrospect, writing more than twenty years later, Koestler has mixed up both his chronology and his authors: there was a successful and popular poem published by Aaron Kramer in 1937 with this exact title. ↩

3 “Az út irodalmi jelentősége részben abban áll, hogy ennek során kezd kialakulni Koestler írástechnikája” ↩

4 “Mivel valamennyire megtanul oroszul is, legkésőbb erre az időszakra tehetjük az orosz klasszikusok és a kortárs szovjet írók műveivel való további, alaposabb megismerkedését. Az út során a kortársak közül néhánnyal személyesen is találkozhatott. Az ismereteit tovább gyarapította, hogy a kisebb, ázsiai szovjet köztáraságokat érintő körutazásának egy részén idejét megosztja Langston Hughes amerikai íróval.” ↩

5 “Koestlernek nagyon nagy baráti köre volt. Voltaképpen minden korszakának, így a harmincas éveknek is, megvolt az elsőszámú testi-lelki jó barátja. Úgy hívták, hogy Langston Hughes.” ↩

6 Using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index-based Inflation Calculator, this is the equivalent of $10.8 in September 2021. Considering even the unrealistically minimalist scenario, given the size of the property, of hiring a mere one servant for four hours per day five times a week would have cost them $80+ dollars per month (or $863.97 adjusted for inflation). See CPI Inflation Calculator (bls.gov) ↩

7 The International Monetary Fund listed the par value of ¢280 for £1 for July 1, 1951 for their own purposes (IMF 1951, 145). This would mean that the Koestlers’ debt of £7000 was the equivalent of $19,600, if we ignore both that commercial banks’ exchange rates would have likely been different and that those rates would have just as likely fluctuated throughout the year. In fact, an alternative source, Eric W. Nye’s (2018) “Pound Sterlings to Dollars” site calculates the 1951 value of £7000 as $26,261.49. These sums, adjusted for inflation using the same online tool as above would today equal either $211,672.28 or $283,613.75. ↩

8 This is not meant in a specific sense, i.e. in reference to the play’s “chain of metonymic pregnancies” (Cristian 2000, 258) and “the repetitive death of the imaginary child” (257). What I mean to reference is the similarity of Koestler’s career couple to George and Martha, and to a lesser extent even to Nick and Honey, in a troubled and somewhat dysfunctional marriage. To quote Réka M. Cristian one more time, Albee’s play(s) “brought into the thespian realm one of the most tabooed dramatic metaphors of his time: life after marriage” (Cristian 2012, 3.1.2, 3) ↩


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