Arthur Koestler’s America, Part I: Experiencing the Country and its Inhabitants

Abstract

This paper, the first part of a larger study, aims to provide an overview of Arthur Koestler’s personal experiences with American citizens, and with the country itself. Special attention is paid to the role of American fellow travelers on Koestler’s journeys to the North Pole and subsequently in Soviet Turkmenistan, as well to the longest of his three extended stays in the United States, starting in late 1950 and lasting until early 1952. Using the various autobiographies of Arthur Koestler, Cynthia Koestler and Langston Hughes, the published correspondence of Mamaine Koestler, Koestler’s unpublished diaries, as well as a whole range of critical biographies, the paper summarizes Koestler’s assessment of the country and its culture, and partially reconstructs the context of that assessment.