Customer Reviews

My Unwritten Books

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For afficianados, this is truly vintage George Steiner, displaying his customary erudition and his provocative ideas and views. Each of these seven essays opens stimulating windows of wit and suggestion, exploring unconventional areas of communal and personal scholarship, values and culture. The elegance of the writing, with its more-than-hints of wicked and mischievous intellectual wit, is truly a pleasure. It would make a fabulous gift to a literate friend.
In more than one of these discourses it is also possible to conjecture a degree of, how should we say, over-vivid memory. It does not diminish, only enhance, the pleasure. George Steiner is a cultural gadfly, whose ideas are always provocative, occasionally outlandish, but are delivered from a commanding cultural height. It is not necessary to agree with all of his ideas to be challenged and enriched by them. Book of the year for me.

Erudition is Steiner's hallmark. Arcane, provocative, imaginative - Steiner 'joins up the dots' in domains of philosophical and literary inquiry you probably don't even know exist. Given his prolific output, it is difficult to know how he would have found time to write the seven books outlined here that he didn't have time to write. Equally difficult to know who would have read them. Always fascinating, sometimes irritating, he is unquestionaly one of the great teachers. There is humour in the writing, and lamentation at opportunities missed, and personal revelation. Who would have thought that George Steiner...! Disappointing that The New York edition has more typographical errors than a professional publisher should be allowed to get away with.

George Steiner's "My unwritten books" in the swan song of a master writer and thinker, perhaps the greatest living man of letters of our time. Deeply learned and brilliantly written, the book itself is a tour de force because gathers seven essays which turn around seven "unwritten books". This may be a rhetorical device to share pretty original and moving reflections with his readers, but the author's accomplishment is magnificent. Steiner is the world's leading literary sage and he deserves the Nobel prize and more.

George Steiner's remarkable erudition is always present in this charming little book, as is a somewhat deflated ego-a recognition of his intellectual and creative limits. The structure of this text serves as a framework from discussing a wide variety of literary and cultural topics, ranging from the Eros of language to animality and the decline of modern education. Occasionally pompous, occasionally self-deprecating, Steiner has an air of imperious condescension about him; his recollection of the variety of prestigious universities that he has been associated with is laid on a bit thick. However, his chapter 'Invidia,' on the perpetual envy of the secondary role of the critic and commentator is penetratingly honest and fascinating. This little text wavers from embarrassing naivete (the chapter on Zionism) to rare pathos (of man and beast). An enjoyable, though ultimately superficial read.

The brilliant polymath and polyglot Steiner is at it again reporting on his own varied interests, and making a delight of his remarkable and always versatile adventures in the realm of mind and culture. Some of these indicate that the 'Age of Discretion' is long gone as when he describes in detail how the language spoken with various lovers gives a distinct flavor to the experience and relationship. Steiner also has a chapter on his fierce devotion to animals a chapter which would make Peter Singer proud. He also touches upon a theme which Joseph Epstein wrote more comprehensively about ' envy' especially in the intellectual and literary life. No Nobel Prize for George aroused in him that not very self- flattering emotion when he twice learned of less able colleagues who did get the Prize. Steiner also writes about the complex relations of teachers and students in this regard. Harold Bloom might see in this chapter a confirmation of his 'agon'- of literary creators always aiming to subvert and overcome the masters they learned from. Steiner may feel the world revolves around Steiner but he makes it do so brilliantly. One cannot help being enlightened time and again by his quite quirky and always intertextualing original mind.
However there is one point where I personally not only get off but get ticked off. And that his whole relationship to Jewishness and Israel. As a wandering multicultural multilingual exception Jew of great brilliance he seems to feel that the whole world should have been created in his image. He believes that Jews should all be happy to remain in the Diaspora with they can enlighten mankind in remarkably intellectual ways. Here however Steiner's egomania is too much. In fact the great majority of the worlds Jews are not geniuses, and not brilliant and not born to enlighten mankind. They are ordinary people who bear with them a history of horrible persecution over centuries. The state of Israel gave new life and hope to many of the people who were tortured and deprived of everything they have by peoples of European civilization. The state of Israel also has provided home and refuge to a million Jews expelled from the Arab and Muslim world. The fact that Israel has been forced to resist the violence against it by military means of its own is regrettable, but necessary. .
Steiner to my mind mars this otherwise illuminating work by putting himself outside a true and sympathetic historical understanding of the situation and development of the Jewish people.