Customer Reviews

Thorstein Veblen: Victorian Firebrand

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. . . . Stanford alumni Elizabeth and Henry Jorgensen have written a clear, engrossing biography that corrects significant errors in previous accounts, but they can't overcome the central problem, Veblen himself . . . . Veblen returned to Palo Alto in 1927, 18 years after Stanford fired him for supposed "immorality." . . . .the signal achievement of this book (flawed mainly by the Jorgensens' too-brief sketches of Veeblen's thought): demonstrating, once and for all, that Veblen was not an unscrupulous womanizer. Though implausible oin its face, that reputation has gone largely unchallenged for half a century, mostly because Ellen Veblen blackened her husband's name so well.

Excerpts from the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 13 #2, Winter, `99: ``Though not entirely successful in depicting the `essential' Veblen . . . .[this new Veblen biography] is essential reading for students and scholars of Veblen. It cannot replace Dorfman's but it deserves equal billing,'' Clare Virginia Eby. ``Flaws and imperfections notwithstanding . . . . their book has entered the sholarly literature on Thorstein Veblen and will henceforth be obligatory reading for anyone wishing to know him,'' Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley.

Thorstein Veblen's reputation has not fared well in the hands of his biographers. The worst bio by far ("Thorstein Veblen and his America" written by Joseph Dorfman in 1934) has sat in libraries like so much toxic waste waiting to mislead another scholar.
Between 1993-95, Veblen's Minnesota childhood home was restored at great trouble and expense. Like most scholars, the restorers started with Dorfman and immediately discovered how full of inaccuracies it was. Then the letters of Andrew Veblen (Thorstein's older and "respectable" brother) were discovered. They were written to protest the distortions of Dorfman's manuscript. They were extremely accurate and eventually would guide virtually every aspect of the restoration.

It was only a matter of time before a new generation of Veblen bios would be written based on the new information. Rick Tilman's "Intellectual Legacy.." was the first, and in many ways the best. But his book was written for serious Veblen scholars.
The new Jorgensen bio is not at all daunting. It is well-written, well-research and very enjoyable to read. It focuses on the significant women in Thorstein's life--his amazing mother, his charming sister Emily, his quite crazy first wife, and his extremely helpful second wife.

This emphasis would not have been my first choice, but since TBV was the only political economist of his age who would be remotely acceptable to a modern feminist, it was certainly appropriate. In fact, the Jorgensens seem to believe that of all the "heresies" that got Veblen in hot water, his enlightened views on women in society were possibly the most problematic.

Outstanding! Every person who has ever been remotely interested in Veblen should read this book.

The authors undertook this project because they believed that a man with such cantankerous ideas must have had an interesting life. Those who had written about him before were earnest in their approach but did not convey an appreciation of his unique personality. Now with the current interest in the millenium, there seems to be a Veblen revival. The WALL STREET JOURNAL of January 11, 1999, devoted a full page to fifteen of the ``Best and Brightest Economic Thinkers Who Made a Difference.'' In this Pantheon of those ``who challenged the conventional wisdom'' and whose perceptions ``changed the way millions thought and lived'' were Saint Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes and Thorstein Veblen. Other recent accolades to Veblen are found in Adam Goprik's article in the April 26-May 3, 1999 issue of THE NEW YORKER, and John Carroll's column ``Conspicuous Presumption'' in THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE of May 3, 1999 Alex Beam of THE BOSTON GLOBE in his colum (April 21, 1999) entitled ``The Love Song of Thorstein Veblen'' had this to say about out book: He observed that he was turned off by books that sort of dragged the sex lifes of their subjects in by the heels, and said: ``Not every distinguished man's sex life is worth researching. . . . But Veblen, the enfant terrible of the turn-of-the century economics profession, enjoyed not just an interesting sex life, as his latest biographers Elizabeth and Henry Jorgensen make clear, he enjoyed his life in full. ``There can be no such thing as a dull biography of Veblen, and this one does not disappoint. ``The man who would later anathematize the titans of capital was a cradle contrarian . . . While Sioux marauders were killing fellow Norwegian homesteaders in Minnesota during the 1860s the boy Thorstein sided with the Indians. . . . [He was also] A-religious--- `If there is a difference between religion and magic I have never seen it.' [Thus] Veblen disdained hsi family's prairie Lutheranism and mocked the pieties of America's golden age. ``He was at heart an anthropologist. THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS represents field work among the grandees who sent their children to the universities where he taught, and among his censorious in-laws. . . . His trenchant analysis of what came to be called male chauvinism in his essay, `The Barbarian Status of Women,' made him ever more unpopular. Escept perhaps, among women. ``Veblen attracted intelligent women, who shared his contempt for male ritual. Even for the serious-minded Jorgensens, it seems impossible to separate Veblen's life story from his love stories. His first wife, Ellen Rolfe, destroyed his academic career by tattling about her husband's affairs to the presidents of Stanford and the University of Chicago. After trudging all night through a blizzard to visit his second wife [-to-be] in `Nowhere,' Idaho, Veblen contacted double pneumonia, which crippled him for life. ``The Jorgensens correctly note that even his most famous writings seem thick and turgid to the modern taste. But he was the rarest of birds in 20th-century Amderica: a dangerous thinker.''

This biography is a strange book, filled with speculation and brash interjections of personal opinion. Characters and events and sometimes even objects are sometimes introduced with nary an explanatory introduction. Texts of letters are dropped into the manuscript with no warning or context. The reader thus must navigate the lack of editorial work in this book while still appreciating its general thesis: that Veblen's first wife, Ellen May Rolfe, blackened his name and reputation by writing directly to university directors and reporting Veblen's natural and wholly rational estrangement from her to them.

They have done a heroic thing in correcting the view of Veblen as a womanizer. Instead, he seems a gentle, misunderstood, deeply attractive man who wouldn't have deliberately hurt or injured a fly. It is ironic that Veblen himself, in his personal life, seems anything but a firebrand: his wives and loves, on the other hand, were passionate, unstable, and tartly outspoken; both of his wives were feminists and socialists.

Interestingly, his first wife, Ellen, appears to have been plagued with instability and mild forms of mental illness; his crush, Sarah, was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown; a woman he was rumored (and only rumored) to have had an affair with committed suicide; and his second wife, Ann (Babe), went actually mad and was hospitalized for more than a year due to her mental illness. We see women and, in a few cases, men surrounding Veblen with the goal of supporting, protecting, nurturing, and caring continually for the Great Man, even at the expense of their own well being and mental health. Still, one cannot blame Veblen for having inspired this effect on the part of others. He was an exceptional person, and some people appear to enjoy making exceptions for the truly exceptional.

Many questions remain unanswered about Veblen and his personal life. It seems that a truly coherent, cohesive, and definitively honest account of this man's personal life has yet to be written.