"Virtually anybody who stops watching television, paying attention to sporting events, or playing the stock market, and concentrates, instead, on the society in which he or she lives, could, in Chomsky's view, effect an appropriate political critique," according to Noam Chomsky.
Who is this man? Judging by the above quote, he is a radical libertarian (sometimes branded a muckraker or modern-day soothsayer). As a restless, independent political and social critic who has often been criticised by the media for his condemnation of capitalism and its militant and exploitative policies, especially the US variety, Chomsky is a worthy subject for a biography.
But there is more. Chomsky is not this man alone. The second, equally important part of what he himself calls his "schizophrenic existence" is that of a revolutionary of linguistics, discoverer of the universal transformational grammar upon which every language is based.
Robert F. Barsky undertook the challenging and demanding task of writing this "double biography" of Noam Chomsky, struggling to keep together two entirely different and yet inseparable threads of thought, both richly documented in Chomsky's numerous publications.
Barsky describes, in well-researched detail, how Chomsky embarked on the two sides of his quest, whose interconnection or even interdependence - which Chomsky himself denies - Barsky sometimes manages to illuminate, most impressively when revealing that Chomsky's rejection of behaviourism is twofold.
Not only does Chomsky regard behaviourism as being unfit as an explanation of the almost infinite variations of language, he also accuses it of "giving a kind of coating" and justification to acts of violence and injustice.
Yet the origins of these two aspects of Chomsky, the political and the linguistic, are shown to be very different. His political and social beliefs are described as being based, largely, on a taking in and developing further of existing ideas from anarchic leftist and Jewish movements and thinkers in the US. In contrast, Chomsky's linguistic achievements are portrayed as being based on his passionate rejection of existing ideas (structuralism, behaviourism).
Two strengths of this book are, strangely, also its weaknesses. Firstly, the valuable five-year personal correspondence of the author with Chomsky is incorporated extensively and very fittingly into the text. Yet this must also be questioned, as it lets Chomsky, and Chomsky only, speak on many matters, thereby revealing Barsky's biased stance.
Barsky even defends Chomsky vehemently against his critics in doubtful matters such as the "Faurisson affair", when Chomsky refused to condemn a writer who had denied the Holocaust (Chomsky, of course, is a Jew) because of his belief that everybody should be allowed freedom of speech no matter what is said.
Secondly, much of chapters 1 and 2, in fact more that one-third of the book, is only marginally concerned with Chomsky. Instead, we are offered a compressed account of US non-Bolshevist Marxist ideas, of the radical Libertarian Left and of leftist Jewish movements in the first half of the 20th century.
Here the book is not a biography but rather a compendium for students of political science or history. And yet this adds decisively to the character of the book as a treasure trove. It is an intellectual invitation to those interested in sociology, linguistics, political science, philosophy, cognitive science or the shaping of a great thinker's ideas. They can, by reading the whole book, expand their horizons and discover new fields, all within slightly over two hundred pages.
Barsky has written an extremely stimulating book, a hoard of ideas, a stunning presentation of thought-provoking opinions. Moreover, this book is necessary in a time which is more than any other in need of morally honest models, be it for science or socio-political critique.
Gert Thomas Reifarth teaches at the National University of Ireland, Galway
