Disenchanged Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev. by Glen Cronin. Published by Cornell Press.
High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism. by David Wills. Published by Beatdom Books.
Adventures in Overthinking: Reactionary Russians and the Fall of Gonzo
I think you're supposed to read new books occasionally but as some of the poorly constructed paragraphs in the entries below imply, I don't do that very often. I've read two newish books recently, one the Leontiev biography I was losing my mind over a few months back and the second one a biography/literary analysis of Hunter S. Thompson. The latter joins a long list of books that have tackled Thompson but this is the first one I've read in a while that actually seemed necessary for people who like his books and take them seriously. The world doesn't need the 20th memoir by someone who hung out in Thompson's kitchen and thinks they're some kind of insider because they shared a beer. I'm not sure the world needs anything more to be written about him really but a book about Thompson the stylist is orders of magnitude more useful than Thompson the man.
I'd love to tie these two authors together beyond the fact that I happen to be reading about them at the same time but I'm not sure I can. Can I just say they are both iconoclastic? On the other hand, I do think there's something to be said about both authors' relationships to substance and style and how both have critics (and fans) who get them wrong. Both of these books turn out to be defenses of much maligned thinkers whose weaknesses don't negate each one's stylistic innovations and core ideas.
The Aesthetic World of Leontiev
To start with the more esoteric subject: Leontiev the Russian doctor/writer/monk. Still relatively obscure even among Russophiles he has undergone a bit of a post-Soviet renaissance. Born in 1831 he studied medicine before deciding to pursue writing full time. Despite the praise of cultural behemoth Turgenev his novels never made much of an impact. He continued to write as he shifted to a diplomatic career in the Ottoman Empire, continuing to churn out picturesque novels that often remained unfinished (and mostly unread by the Russian reading public). He also put his major philosophical ideas about how cultures grow and decay into book form, but these works failed to find much of a public either. While a supporter of traditional Russian culture who rejected Europe, he was often at odds with other conservative thinkers. He died in a monastery not long after becoming an Orthodox monk. His support of monarchism and religion ensured that he received little attention in his home country during the Soviet era, and most Western commentators seemed equally put off by his literary output. He's made a bit of a comeback lately, with new editions of some of his classic works in addition to Cronin's biography.
Disenchanted Wanderer won't rescue Leontiev from obscurity, however compelling it is for people who already appreciate his ideas. Nor will it change the fact that most of the little attention received today involves people rejecting him for either the shallowness of his "biggest' philosophical ideas or just for being a conservative Russian thinker in general (I think Putin approvingly quoted him once, which is more than enough to get you memory holed by the West's dull academics). Some right wing cranks find simplified versions of his ideas congenial as well, meaning a cross section of not terribly bright opportunists give their attention to him, however briefly. Cronin follows Leontiev's life chronologically with large digressions for his novels and philosophical books, where he tries to unpack the strange brew of extreme but misunderstood ideas lurking there. It all leads up to the idea that decades after his death a radical Marxist named Stalin's approach to politics embodied some of Leontiev's prophesy of a traditionalist socialism taking hold of Russia, a bold idea however many qualifiers you attach to it.
Leontiev's pet philosophical theory (that civilizations have a life cycle similar to biological organisms) probably strikes modern readers as something not terribly interesting, probably old fashioned, and possibly racist because it laments the inevitable fall of Europe as the dominating force in the world. While this isn't quite fair (especially since he hated Europe and at one point gave it the status of the source of all evil) I was more interested in his novels because it's here that his obsession with living life according to aesthetic principles comes to light. Cronin gives plenty of space to his strictly philosophical works but more importantly traces his general approach to life through his novels, most of which feature men modeled after the author gliding through either the Russian countryside or modern day Turkey. This "approach" is really two related but distinct sets of ideas that Leontiev embraced at different points in his life. His younger self's obsession with pure aesthetics developing into a aestheticized conservative Christianity after a near death experience. This obsessive quest for beauty that his novels convey so clearly is much more compelling than his pseudo-naturalistic philosophical system.
It's an odd time to be reading Leontiev of course. On the other hand, 2022 America's hatred of all things Russian shouldn't give you too much pause when reading Russian authors. People should immerse themselves in a mental world different from their own like curious human beings used to do before everyone got so ideologically rigid. That being said, much of what sits at at the center of Leontiev's worldview will be (many would say, "should be") quickly rejected by most people and his philosophical ideas have serious limitations. But he expresses his ideas so well and he refused so adamantly to stop trying to make life beautiful that I am compelled to admire him. Of course, you can reduce his ideas to something simple that the modern West doesn't like ("Russian nationalism", " traditional religion") but this is unfair because it makes his ideas seem more simple than they actually were and it ignores how well he expressed them.
Recusing Thompson from his Critics (and, more importantly, his fans)
And here we have ideas we can apply to Thompson, a man who ultimately expressed mostly common sense left of center options BUT who also 1- did so creatively and 2- can't be reduced to more popular and less complex versions of those ideas.
You can certainly play the overly rationalistic and thick headed American with both Leontiev and Thompson to make their most beautiful writing prosaic. Leontiev's best novel, Egyptian Dove? "A bored Russian diplomat goes for long walks and lusts after a Greek merchant's wife." And Thomson's classic work: "A not terribly successful middle aged hippy journalist does lots of drugs and makes a nuisance of himself roaming around Las Vegas." Both have ideas that seem weak or incomplete but there's a reason people enjoy both of them despite that. New books about Leontiev and new editions of his classic works aren't coming out because people suddenly love old time religion and Russian monarchism but because he makes those things sound beautiful. Thompson hasn't been read by millions merely because he discusses drug use and a lack of inhibition but because he does these things so well and places them into the context of the concepts of American excess and freedom and their limits.
But for all the praise Thompson's style gets I have found few people who go into detail about it or bring to light the reasons behind his status as a good writer. David Wills' High White Notes is the first book I've read that talks about why Thompson is such a great stylist. Plenty of fans and celebrities interviewed in documentaries will say how great he was and even cite great individual passages but Wills delves into the details of how these passages are constructed. Breaking down some of those well known passages word by word he talks about how elements like the repetition of certain sounds and varying the number of syllables within each sentence are what make his best writing work so well. The terrible quality of his later writings seems much more tragic after reading Wills take apart some of the classic early Thompson "high notes". I still think The Curse of Lono deserved to be removed from the category of "awful late Thompson efforts" but then again, I think I mostly enjoyed the beauty of the original edition of that book, a giant thing with full page color drawings by Steadman (and a lover of Leontiev would love such a beautiful but badly written thing).
Both of these books also point to another shared train of these men with unfortunate legacies: Thompson and Leontiev both possess a cohort of simpleminded fans that these books should to refute. You can find fringe far right weirdos approvingly quoting out of context ideas from Leontiev just like you can find barely literate burn outs quoting "the Vegas book". But with a little effort you can also find more complex ideas in their work that contradicts these views of them. After all, what kind of nationalist constantly writes about how vile nationalism is because it's not beautiful enough? And obsessively seeking and writing about the American dream seems like a lot of work if someone is just a washed up refugee from the 60's.
Men on the Move, Just Sick Enough to be Totally Confident...
Added to all that is the fact that both struggled with money, spent a lot of time traveling, and never quite fit into any political movement easily, including the ones that their public image can't be separated from. Of course, one died in a monastery with only a small group of followers to mourn him, while the other died very famous (and very much not a monk). Both also wound up side by side on my bookshelf (and in a blog entry no one will ever read!)
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