I Prefer the Drier Idiom
I Prefer the Drier Idiom

Summary/Abstract: János Kornai: A gondolat erejével. Rendhagyó önéletrajz (By Force of Thought: Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey) Budapest, Osiris, 2005, 428 pp. Two years ago, to the surprise of many who know him, Professor János Kornai set about writing his recently published memoirs. As the title suggests, his is an unorthodox autobiography. It is as if Kornai set out to write another scholarly work in which he weighs up his life as a whole, his career, his academic work and his role in public life. He does so at a distance and without omitting any essential strand, favourable to him or not. This is the sort of undertaking that demands a great deal: moral fortitude, the ability to look with detachment at oneself and take stock of the broad sweep of history and politics, a keen memory and, not least of all, the diligence to check, supplement and support one’s claims—examining specialist literature, the press and documents in archives. Since János Kornai possesses these attributes in abundance and writes well, his book can be instantly recognised as an indispensable record of an era and a generation.

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