Word: cassandra
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...Goodbye, Cassandra. Koestler's main theme: the big issues that agitated intellectuals for two generations-right v. left, capitalism v. socialism-have today become less relevant than they were. The great issue now, as any man of reason must see it, says Koestler, is relative freedom v. absolute tyranny. As for the notion cherished by the left that private property is the chief obstacle to human progress and brotherhood, this has in fact been answered by the Soviet Union, which has set up in the name of socialism a more hypocritical and merciless tyranny than any state in history...
...Says Koestler: "This ... is a farewell to arms ... I have said all I had to say on these questions [that have] obsessed me, in various ways, for the best part of a quarter century. Now the errors are atoned for, the bitter passion has burnt itself out; Cassandra has gone hoarse, and is due for a vocational change." As to what the vocational change might be, for a man who is proud that his books have been burned behind him, the reader must guess. And who is the dinosaur of the book's title? It is man-especially, perhaps...
...strictly dramatic criticism, however, Bentley's virtues are not so clearly defined. He has been heralded as the precursor of a new era in criticism; at times he poses as a modern Cassandra, decrying the decadence of Broadway; more often he seems to be a crank, who doesn't really care for the theatre...
...Cassandra's theory of reporting fits his headlong methods. "It's easy to be wrong," says he, "but it's not easy to plunge ahead as if you were right without giving the other point of view." No one could ever accuse Cassandra of giving the other point of view on anything from dogs ("Man's best friend is a fake and a fraud, and the sooner he is taught to lay eggs or produce milk the better") to doctors ("I don't like their mumbo jumbo, their smooth, lying inefficiency...
...Cassandra, who writes in longhand, seldom consults a note or reference source, is more interested in getting his prose right than his facts. Meeting Cassandra in person for the first time, says one old friend, is like being "involved in an extremely unpleasant motor crash." But neither his barbed manner nor the arrogance of his column is any accident. Says Cassandra: "I know how to be hostile, suspicious and skeptical. I can wield these unlovable qualities like a whip...