There are a couple of things that might help you to
understand and appreciate John Lukacs. First, his career goal was to be a
writer, not a historian. One can say that history, viewed from the wide lens of the
Modern Age, to a close-up in Five Days in London: May
1940, to a microscopic view in vignettes as short as a brief imagined conversation, mark the range of his writing. Fortunately, for history as a discipline, and we
as readers, he chose modern history as his subject matter.
Second, you should know that one reviewer labeled Lukacs a “conservative
polymath”, but Lukacs rejects the “conservative” designation because of his
rejection of so much of American political conservatism. Instead, he considers
himself a “reactionary impressionist”. What is that? Here’s Lukacs in an
interview discussing the “reactionary” portion of his self-designation:
“a remnant reactionary, a remnant bourgeois, a remnant admirer of the civilization and culture of the past five hundred years, European and Western." [Quoting his description of himself in his “auto-history”, Last Rites.] I say this even though I consider many of the dominant ideas and achievements of the past 500 years—for example, objectivity, progress, and materialism—to be insufficient, and I strongly resist these categorical formulations as absolutes.
Thus, Lukacs, by this self-designation as a “reactionary”,
signals his unique political and historical perspective. But what about the “impressionist”
portion of “reactionary impressionist”? For understanding this designation, we
have no better guide than A Thread of
Years.
A
Thread of Years has been labeled an “experimental work”, and
Lukacs himself says that it’s neither literature nor history. I think,
it’s both, with a good deal of essay and dialogue thrown
in. In this work, using most of the years between 1900 and 1969, Lukacs writes
short vignettes involving fictional characters within different settings in
Europe and the U.S. He then comments upon and discusses the vignettes with his “alter
ego”. The subjects of these vignettes vary, although a few characters appear in
several of the vignettes. His locales and characters include Philadelphia and
its environs (where Lukacs settled and taught), Catholic Churches, its priests
and laity (Lukacs is Catholic and taught many years at a small Catholic college
in Philadelphia), and Hungarians (Lukacs is a native of Hungry), along with other
assorted characters and locales. Even those characters and locales with which
he seems to have no direct connection are quite convincing. Any Lukacs
reader quickly recognizes his erudition and his writer’s eye for character and
place.
The format of vignettes allows Lukacs to write in the manner
of a novelist, a form which I have no doubt he could have mastered if he’d have chosen
that path. By taking different years and settings, he gives us a sense of the ordinary human
lives that co-existed with great historical events. He also demonstrates how
culture and civilization have changed in the course of the first 70 years of
the 20th century (although published in 1998, Lukacs stopped his
vignettes at 1969). For instance, he addresses the decline of the Anglo-Saxon elite in the U.S.
and rising tide of a form of populism. The intriguing thing about this project
is his ability to create these brief sketches, these impressionistic word
pictures of persons and places. In this he's similar to what we experience in the great
impressionistic painters. I consider him a verbal Renoir, Manet, Monet, or Degas,
but not one not limited to the fin-de-siècle.
Instead, he uses a large chunk of the 20th century to locate his
verbal canvasses.
The dialogues are more challenging. Like native European
intellectuals that I’ve read, he alludes to sources and experiences that often
elude me. The dialogues also seem to allow him to acknowledge his biases and
prejudices (for instance, he does not like the film Casablanca), thereby both airing them and letting them stand or
fall as the reader deems appropriate. Sometimes I felt as if I was overhearing
a conversation in a foreign language that I knew a bit of. I could pick-up bits
and pieces, but I still felt as though I missed the greater whole. On the other
hand, we learn from listening to the adults, so the benefit far
outweighs any frustration.
In preparing for this review and blog, I found that I’d
labeled 21 earlier blog entries as mentioning, if not focused upon, John Lukacs. This entry makes 22,
and assuming my good fortune to keep on reading and learning, you can expect
many more. After all, while out of the U.S., he’s published another book. In
addition, with Lukacs, I’ve found I can re-read with continued benefit and
enjoyment. What better recommendation for an author?
