Mario Vargas Llosa, the great novelist, has written a book about his political development and the thinkers who influenced him. I have written about it, and related matters, here. In a minute or two, I’d like to ask you a question.
Vargas Llosa writes about seven thinkers and his encounters with them. He begins with Adam Smith. The other six, however, are 20th-century men. They include Hayek, Aron, and Berlin.
Let me do a little quoting from my piece:
I have always enjoyed asking people about their influences — how they got to be who they are, or to think how they think. Reading Vargas Llosa, I was reminded of Enrique Krauze, the Mexican historian — who gave me these names: Orwell, Koestler, Popper, and Berlin. I also thought of Charles Krauthammer — who gave me Berlin.
When he was in college, he said, he read Four Essays on Liberty. That was it. That sealed him. This is what I believe, young Krauthammer thought. This is true and right.
Here is something else:
Greg Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard (who has participated in government and politics, too). He told me that, as a young man, he read Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. It set him on fire. It struck him as true. Now he assigns it — with diverse other readings — to his students. Some of them, too, are set on fire, or at least affected. Friedman is one of the thinkers and influences whom Vargas Llosa hails in his book.
And near the end of my piece, I have this:
We all have books that made an impression on us, or maybe even set us on fire. A few years ago, I talked with a group of young people interested in politics and journalism. They had read books saying that liberalism was a mistake, and that America, in particular, needed a new way forward. A post-liberal future. These youngsters were convinced of this. Their political models were not Thatcher and Reagan. Their tastes ran to Orbán and Bolsonaro.
Will they stay with their views, and tastes? Throw them off? Who knows? Mario Vargas Llosa threw off Sartre and Castro. Krauthammer stuck with Isaiah Berlin, forever.
I would have to think a little more about the books that influenced me — political books, I mean (or books with strong political ingredients). WFB’s National Review influenced me, and so did Norman Podhoretz’s Commentary. But books? WFB’s collection Right Reason hit me at just the right time. I was in my early 20s. I thought that book was stellar.
It is. So are WFB’s other collections. After Right Reason, I went on to read them all. The collection right after Right Reason was Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist. The very first was Rumbles Left and Right: A Book about Troubling Ideas and People.
A lot of people my age read Paul Johnson’s Modern Times. That was the title of the American edition, I believe. I read the book in its original, British edition, whose title was “A History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s.” I borrowed the book from the library, as I was not buying many books in those impecunious days.
Anyway, I became a full-fledged Johnsonian (Paul and Samuel, though those names are out of chronological order).
Okay, I wish to ask you: What book or books made an impression on you, or set you on fire? What book or books were key in the formation of your politics, or worldview? If you’d like to tell me about it, please write jnordlinger@nationalreview.com. I will, as usual, issue a report on the responses.
A book can move the world, for good or ill (and may good have the upper hand, as we travel onward).
P.S. Readers may be interested in a piece I wrote two years ago, titled “Right Words: On how to write, and what to read.” There is a list — two, actually — at the end.