Marxist Moments

“Whatever Happened to…?”

 

          It is no sin to be forgotten. Judging by a perusal of back-numbers of the Times Literary Supplement, nobody ever is.

          But there is a sense in which being largely forgotten is a kind of judgment. Forgottenness in the list below may have something to do (in many cases) with overblown pretensions, and with the hype of the time for which the subject may or may not have been chiefly responsible.

          Being dead is no excuse. Where would history and biography be if persons became forgotten because they had died? Indeed, as in the case with artists, death often leads to enhanced reputations and escalating asset-values. I hasten to add that a number listed below are still very much alive.

          The list covers the public realm generally – authors, cultural pundits of the day, one-time radicals and experimentalists, thinkers and doers across a wide range of the social, cultural and political, philosophers, psychologists, economists, theologians. All or most were once widely followed with avidity, their next works looked forward to with baited breath, and argued over interminably. They were household names at least amongst the literati and often somewhat beyond. Some made headlines.

          I’ve deliberately left out popular/pop/rock stars, scandal figures and fashion icons – surely the most ephemeral? Not really. Mandy Rice-Davies and the late Christine Keeler are ever with us. John Profumo is the only member of Macmillan’s government anyone can recall, offhand. Cecil Beaton was a certain kind of high-fashion icon but is strangely immortal. So is Coco Chanel, amongst others. Buddy Holly never reached the 1960s. Mario Lanza never reached the Sixties either but still sells albums. This year Frank Sinatra would be 103. Elvis lives. These and others have a tendency towards permanency  denied all too many in ‘the higher culture’. As the saying goes: when in doubt go on tour. Even as a hologram.

          If some of the names listed below are entirely strange to you, they really have been forgotten. Others are ‘in the process of’, so to speak. Meanwhile aficionados are going to be furious…

(Sir) Richard Acland

John Arden

Hannah Arendt 1

(Sir) Isaiah Berlin

Brigid Brophy

Norman O Brown

Frank Buchman

Anthony Burgess 2

(Dame) Barbara Cartland

Carlos Castaneda

Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Regis Debray


John Dos Pasos

Laurence Durrell 3

HJ Eysenck

Francis Fukuyama

Buckminster Fuller 4


Anthony ('Third Way') Giddens

Graham Greene 5

Abby Hoffman

Ivan Illich

Eugene Ionesco 6

CEM Joad

James Jones

Alfred Kinsey 6

Hans Kung

Arthur Laffer

RD Laing


Harold Laski

Sinclair Lewis 7

Claude Levi-Strauss

Mary McCarthy

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marcuse

W Somerset Maugham

Henry Miller

Jonathan Miller

Malcolm Muggeridge

Lewis Mumford

Iris Murdoch

Timothy O’Leary

Vance Packard 6

Laurens van der Post

Anthony Powell 8

John Cowper Powys

Dorothy Richardson 9

Harold Robbins

Lionel (Lord) Robbins


Robert Ruark

Ken Russell

James Saunders

(Sir) CP Snow

Susan Sontag 10

Donald (Lord) Soper

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

DM Thomas

Paul Tillich

Arnold Wesker

Huw Wheldon

Angus Wilson

Colin Wilson

Boris Yeltsin

 

1. More recently a revival of interest in her thought.
2. Known now largely via association with the notoriety of Kubrick’s film of ‘A Clockwork Orange’.
3. Was my personal god when I was twenty.
4. We still have geodesic domes but the philosophy has been cast aside.
5. ‘The greatest novelist of his time’? Don’t worry: ‘We’ll always have Vienna – and the zither…’
6. Regrets in some cases. I rate Eugene Ionesco as one of the 20^th century’s most penetrating and disturbing playwrights but he refuses to be revived.  Ivan Illich in the 1960s was an inspired anarchist and teacher whose De-schooling Society, amongst other books, we yet have much to learn from. Alfred Kinsey statistically liberated us all in terms of sexual enlightenment only to be posthumously and disgracefully denigrated by his latter-day peers. Vance Packard in the 1950s and 60s did much to heighten our awareness of the insidious power of advertising. Alas, advertising survived him to go on to even greater triumph, riches and supremacy.
7. America’s first literature Nobel prizewinner. Both Babbit and Elmer Gantry prove to be far-seeing and relevant to today. His death in 1951 made the headlines and the radio news but he seems all but forgotten today.
8. A new biography may well revive public interest.
9. As a pathbreaking novelist stylistically, Richardson was once ranked alongside Virginia Woolf.
10. Has now made a comeback with a new book (2017) of reflective prose.

There are no set rules for being remembered, and the following are not necessarily relevant to all those just listed, but they might act as a sort of guide to the aspirant.

Don’t go in for false dawns. Choose your sunrises with some care.

Don’t make claims you can’t really substantiate.

Don’t confuse creative eclecticism with originality.

Be basically, not superficially, subversive.

Remember that our works are either symptoms or solutions. Too often  a proposed solution is really only a symptom of the problem or situation under consideration. Symptoms of a social era are rarely in a position to initiate big change of that of which they are such an intimate part.

Be lucky not to be taken up and hyped beyond the possibility of enthusing posterity.

Don’t watch this space for – Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Baudrillard, Kristeva et al. Better observers than I have been taking them apart for some years but not before too many university students were confusedly bedazzled.

     Then there are those who were virtually unknown until sometime after their deaths. Think of Copernicus. Or, in modern times, the late Hyman Minsky, these days very much ‘the man of the Moment’ in economics. Not to mention Jesus of Nazareth, who was not much ‘hyped’ when in the corporeal state.