Customer Reviews

Flying Against the Arrow: An Intellectual in Ceausescu's Romania (Central European Library of Ideas)

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I read this book in Romanian; thus I will focus on the book's contents, not its translation. The book is a mixture of autobiographical notes and fundamental truths, blended with natural ease by one of modern Romania's foremost thinkers. For those who have lived under oppression, this book will highlight some of the personal solutions found to survive communist Romania. For those who only read about Big Brother, there will be interesting insights into art of survival. Fundamental truths decorate the text in a gem-like fashion. These are the result of Patapievici's combined education, as a physicist and as a philosopher. His way of looking at things has that particular quality that emerges when experiencing the "Eureka" feeling - as the Greek Archimedes once did. Upon reading this book, the reader is likely to say, "This is it!" more than once. At least I did. A highly enjoyable book, both from the epic, as well as from the cultural perspective.

I read this book in Romanian; thus I will focus on the book's contents, not its translation. The book is a mixture of autobiographical notes and fundamental truths, blended with natural ease by one of modern Romania's foremost thinkers. For those who have lived under oppression, this book will highlight some of the personal solutions found to survive communist Romania. For those who only read about Big Brother, there will be interesting insights into art of survival. Fundamental truths decorate the text in a gem-like fashion. These are the result of Patapievici's combined education, as a physicist and as a philosopher. His way of looking at things has that particular quality that emerges when experiencing the "Eureka" feeling - as the Greek Archimedes once did. Upon reading this book, the reader is likely to say, "This is it!" more than once. At least I did. A highly enjoyable book, both from the epic, as well as from the cultural perspective.

Patapievici is one of the most interesting intellectuals in Eastern Europe. His sharp criticism of Romania's nationalistic illusions has greatly contributed to the country's democratic progress. This book is not his best, but certainly an exciting one.

I've just finished this book. I was surprised to find in it much more from what I expected.

A beautiful book, written by a person with a deep sensitivity toward structures of life and feeling. In the book's narrative, the process of intellectual formation during communism steams out from a non-political, non-dissident, non-resistance positionality to the regime. The style and content is literary; only retrospectively can we consider such a book "political": it is basically a diary, a beautiful, lyrical one, although the philosophical references are somehow doubtful. Where there other subliminal political spaces of intellectual formation in communist Romania, spaces located at the periphery of the hegemonic discourses, such as pop and rock music, arts, mathematics, sports, and even alternative literature and poetry of the Mircea Cartarescu and Mircea Dinescu type? Finally, how can one reconcile this author's ideas with his other publishing, where, although dedicated to an anti-communist ethos, he basically supports the abolition of equal and universal suffrage and adheres to a "white supremacist" type of discourse, mocking the integrative, multicultural stance of North-American universities, as "American communism," "Nazism" and "Leninism" together, praising the culture of the "white man, ethnic Romanian, Christian-Orthodox, and heterosexual?" The publication of H.-R. Patapievici's diary in English is both a start (finally enabling regional voices to be heard in the mainstream North-American discourses) and an ambivalently bold act from the part of the Central European University, in the context of this author's aforementioned political proclivities.

Mr. Patapievici is a hotly contested figure in Romania. Not the most representative or even known dissenter during the 80s, his fame is the product of an emergent market of power and prestige in Romanian culture. Supported and promoted by elitist groups, the social ethos he promotes is an elitist one, too. His more recent ideas harken back to a form of 19th century conservatism that might seem quaint if it weren't extravagant to the point of bigotry. ...