David Horowitz: Points in Time
But in so doing he has achieved even more. He has created his own literary horizon both for himself and his readers, embracing past and present within its expanding circle. A Point in Time, like The End of Time and A Cracking of the Heart, positions the reader to see his work as forming a virtual tradition, which each new book recasts, re-orients, and partially transmutes. The previous work is, so to speak, backlit by the subsequent, creating an effect of textual and contemplative seamlessness. For as I’ve indicated, Horowitz has become his own inheritance and mythos, a literary institution in his own right.
The same can be said of the living archive which is Horowitz’s published oeuvre, the calendar of his literary achievements which tracks a developing itinerary. “I am impelled forward in my writing,” as he says toward the conclusion of A Point in Time. Every new book not only confers momentum on those to come after but is the result of those that came before, requiring us to re-evaluate the precedents under the sign of his latest contribution. When I go back to Radical Son or Unholy Alliance, for example, it is as if I’m now making the acquaintance of a somewhat altered David Horowitz, a writer who differs from the one I first met. I’m reading (or re-reading) the same books but they now carry a different valence, seem more layered and complex, enriched by an aura of personality I could not have originally intuited but which was always there, however subliminally. There is a sense of something evolving toward new insights and conclusions captured in every succeeding publication.
This is a unique experience one does not find in most other writers, accomplished as they may be, who either repeat a favored theme with new evidence to substantiate an argument or produce a series of eclectic volumes, recognizable as the product of the same author by the accident of name, thematic interests, stylistic quirks, and phrasal mannerisms. But with Horowitz there is a feeling of gradually accreting unity, a quality of the organic and holistic implicit in his work that renders it not merely consecutive but continuous. It is like an increasingly elaborate manifold. This is what I mean when I say that his work resembles an evolving order à la Eliot, a kind of self-adjusting literature in its own right.
When I first began reading Horowitz, I found myself thinking that I had come across an interesting writer. As I continued to read him, the impression grew that he was not simply an “interesting writer,” but a significant authorial force in the political and academic amphitheater. At this point in time, cresting with his latest works, I believe we must acknowledge David Horowitz as one of the major writers of the modern era. Although in his latest book the focus falls on Horowitz himself and his spiritual education, the subtitle identifies his most transcendent theme: “The Search for Redemption in this Life and the Next.” The audit and catechism proceed along the entire scale of human experience.
People may tend not to see this because they define Horowitz exclusively as a writer in a politically conservative mode or as a polemicist for a cause. But he is much more than that. He is, as I’ve suggested, something like a tradition in the making, as well as a fluent stylist and an authentic thinker who addresses the important questions of our existence across the gamut from the practical to the metaphysical. And in so doing, he has also built his own sustaining narrative.
What Horowitz has given us, then, is not only a series of notable books but, as I have argued elsewhere, a kind of wisdom literature in itself, changing and deepening with every new addition to the procession. A Point in Time will yield to other points in time, each signaling the next with inaugural premonitions and modifying the previous in novel ritornellos. Horowitz is one of those rare writers who are both memory and prelude, and we are lucky to have him.
It is a beautifully written book. Read it.
“A Cracking of the Heart,” written on the occasion of the untimely death of his daughter Sarah, is a book of surpassing beauty, a lasting achievement, one that is itself an answer to some of the issues raised in “A Point in Time.” The first book achieved a kind of immortality for her; the second for himself, despite himself, since it is all the more poignant for its underestimation of his own accomplishments. I agree with David Solway that, taken together, these two books take Horowitz to a new level achieved by very few writers in our time.
Horowitz has done great work, I agree. And he has a great message.
However, he is a tree falling in the forest that no one hears. This is solely due to his earlier work. The same can be said for Roger Simon. Readers like you, David, may hear. But not the deafened hoi polloi of today’s America. Those brainwashed masses were indeed created by these same writers, and those masses now own our future.
With their 1960s harangues, young ardent and eloquent ‘useful idiots’ like Horowitz and Simon created the collectivist oligarchy America has now become. I was there when they did it. And they did it gleefully, consciously and artfully. They were the MSNBC anchors of their movement to destroy America.
I emigrated — did a John Galt — in 1969 rather than endure watching the brainwashing of my children and enduring the loss of the Republic — the former of which I prevented, and the latter of which has actually happened.
Now that there are no listeners, the 60s ‘useful idiots’ choose to grow up, become capitalists, small ‘r’ republicans, men of reason. But not MEN until they apologize to all of us from that era who were sneered at, smeared and mocked by them and their disciples, and for losing America.
I don’t blame the 1960s generation for the “brainwashed masses.” The 1960s generation, of which David Horowitz was a high functioning part, were the logical outcome of the populist-progressive tradition, in place since the late 19th century in the upper-class led turn away from laissez-faire capitalism in order to contain the immigrants and their labor radicalism. I wrote very briefly about the emotional problems that tradition entailed here: http://clarespark.com/2009/08/09/what-is-a-corporatist-liberal-and-why-should-they-frighten-us/, but my whole website deals with it, for instance http://clarespark.com/2009/08/25/t-w-adorno-and-his-funny-idea-of-genuine-liberalism/. Don’t blame Horowitz and Simon or their generation.
I see your point but refuse take it.
“The evil of the fathers goes down yea to the seventh generation” as I recall.
That does not preclude the 2nd through the 7th from responsibility for their own evil. The ‘boomers’ shat on our plates, and they ought to pay for it.
I have a David Horowitz problem too, and mine is likely less generous then yours. I simply do not buy the idea that there is a former left. There is a left, and it is a left whether it is reformed or not.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. I recall a very recent discussion David Horowitz gave where he said that education in the US was doctrinal in the years from the early 1800′s to the early 1950′s. Then in the 1950′s a new model of thinking in the Universities came into existence using the methods and tools of rational science under-girding the Social Sciences, History etc.
This of course is nonsense. Which schools were doctrinal in the years of the last Century and a half – Engineering Schools? Medical Schools, Agricultural Schools? There were Schools of Religion but calling them Doctrinal is silly.
As a friend of mine said – well the McGuffey readers were doctrinal. Oh no they weren’t. They were moral stories. The Doctrinal Readers are in our public schools today extolling homosexuality. The readers were thought of as doctrinal because the authors were religious.
There are indeed conflicts of idealism and rationality in our Culture, but it is the left that is doctrinal. We shouldn’t be fooled on this question by the new Conservatives who repeat the same errors of doctrinal consistency and purity the left, of which they are a part, and why David Horowitz is one of them.
David Horowitz is turning one idealism in for another – they are both left, they are as doctrinal as always. Let us put it this way. When we see the left’s social sciences, or the Global Warming Hoaxes, or the use of Darwinism to obscure real science and evolution – who would and should object? The answer is complex but no political/ideology group has real skin in the game.
It was more specific than you imply. It wasn’t a “logical outcome of the populist-progressive tradition”, although the specific approach leveraged progressivism as an enabler.
It resulted from a very deliberate and specific strategy by marxists to undermine, de-stabalize, and effectively overthrow western civilization.
I don’t call it a plan, although there have been many plans along the way. No plan could have survived 60+ years, only a strategy could.
The strategy is now clear. Take over the media. Take over the education system. Corrupt the governors and bureaucrats. Balkanize the country (i.e., by race, faith, sexuality, occupation, economic strata, geographic regioin, urban vs rural, family structures, etc., etc., etc.). Buy the support of the balkanized groups and make them dependent on the state. Insert leaders who mouth the words of freedom but who implement the policies of tyranny.
It’s the second or third most successful political strategy in world history, and it is now in direct life-or-death conflict with one of the other two; Constitutional Democracy in alliance with free-market Capitalism.
In 2012, we will know the winner.
“…the 60s ‘useful idiots’ choose to grow up, become capitalists, small ‘r’ republicans, men of reason….”
Nope, they’re still idiots, know-it-all, got-all-the-answers idiots. They’ve just moved from the Loony Left to the Wacky Right.
Though I thoroughly enjoy Horowitz’s books mentioned, as well as ‘Reforming Our Universities..’ (if the ‘OWS’ lemmings had read this book in college, I’d wager the majority would have had a real, economically essential degree), this style book from Horowitz doesn’t interest me.
I agree completely with pelaut’s comments.
This and other books dealing with Horowitz’s personal side are very good, I’ll bet.
Horowitz, Milton Friedman, Mike Savage, David Zucker, Pat Caddell, Dennis Miller, Orwell, Ronald Reagan etc., have made 180′s in their political/religious (C.S. Lewis for starters) pedigree have to acknowledge, as we all do, our entire body of work, contributions.
As much as I appreciate Horowitz’s latter impressive efforts, his earlier actions encourage me to not read ‘Point in Time’.
Clare Spark attempts to brush blame aside for their radical behaviors but those mentioned were adults for goodness sake. A majority of books I’ve referred to for Conservative values, beliefs and constructs were available in their youth as well!
Those who think Horowitz has never taken personal responsibility for his destructive youth have obviously never read his work.
In any event, he has spent decades atoning for early errors by a relentless pursuit of truth and decency.
Anyone who denigrates converts, especially those converts who, having seen the light, dedicate their lives to sharing it, is a fool and an ingrate.
Many of the greatest and most effective conservative writers have been converts of one sort or another. And no wonder. They understand things the ever-pure cannot really know.
Marilena, as I and others expressed in detail, I do appreciate Horowitz’ books, message.
Though I’m no fan of the ‘born-again’ Christian, Conservative (insert others here) storyline.
So go right ahead and call me a fool or ingrate. You’re obviously someone who has NO power of persuasion I.e. your ‘reasoning skills’ are lacking.
‘Ever-pure’? I and pelaut didn’t come off as sanctimonious in our posts. Though ‘you in the know’ sure sound like such a person. JMO.
If I wish to read/see people righting themselves spiritually, financially in a myriad of ways, there’s always the 700 Club.
1 more thing.. Horowitz’ ‘youth’. You make it sound like Mr. Horowitz was a kid when changing his political stripe.
He didn’t entertain such a thing until his mid-30′s and didn’t go public until his mid-40′s/ mid 1980′s.
Nonetheless it’s nice having a ‘political Serpico’ when reading his political, educational books, speaking engagements.
Thanks Mr. Solway. Looks like another must-read by the great David Horowitz.