Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent

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Summary: Don't be mislead by Olier Kamm (the reviewer)
Review: ...

As for this biography, I suggest taking a copy out of a library and check it out before purchasing. It does cover some ground, and is an enjoyable read, if you're a fan.

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Summary: A boring, uninformative study
Review: A very boring book. The author focused almost exclusively on Chomsky's history as a linguist and paid inadequate attention to his political activism. Almost nothing was said about his views on Israel and his media criticism, which, whether you love it or hate it, is certainly worth reading about.

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Summary: Too brief to cover the kind of life Chomsky has had
Review: Barsky's achievement is respectable for at least one reason: he got some personal information out of Chomsky. I've been reading Chomsky for a while now and have always been impressed by his guarding of his personal life. David Barsamian, who has interviewed him probably more than anyone has - for sure more than anyone I know has - comes close once in a while. Usually it touches on how he feels about something; never anything to do with the stuff to keep biographers buzzing. As for the rest of Barsky's book I have to say that I was hardly moved by it. I appreciated the organization, and Barsky's quite obvious understanding of the issues that have arisen during Chomsky's "Life of Dissent". But I must refer to my disappointment at the immediate realization that this could hardly reflect the kind of life Chomsky has had. Hence, a 200 plus page book is not a biography. Maybe Barsky promised it was not a biography; I can't remember. To me, however, it doesn't matter. I'm always looking for good stuff by and about Chomsky. Sometimes I find really stimulating material; sometimes I find variations of views that I've seen already; sometimes I find worthless psychobabble. Barsky's book provided some new material (the strain the Faurisson affair on Chomsky was coming close to revelatory, as biographies do) but mostly it covered as much as it could about 40 plus years of intense public activity in the US (of all places) and public scrutiny in the same amount of space allotted for a court judge's decision on where domestic pets can and cannot defecate, and why. Barsky's book is excellent commentary on some significant events in Chomsky's life - in precis form - but comes up short of adequately depicting a life of dissent, especially Noam Chomsky's.

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Summary: A Great Bio of the World's Greatest Living Intellectual
Review: For those who only know Chomsky for his revolutionary work in the field of linguistics and are not aware that he is also an untiring critic of media propaganda and government malfeasance this book is for you. In this enlightening biography of one of America's leading dissidents, Barsky beautifully illustrates Chomsky's dedication in his tireless fight against the forces of injustice and hate--at great personal risk to both his career and life. The ideal that Chomsky follows is not new, however, but based in the long tradition of social activism that finds its birth in the philosophy of Socrates, put to use by countless individuals from Thoreau, Ghandi and Martin Luther King, through their adherence to the fundamental idea of intellectual independence and a healthy skepticism of the dictates of power and authority.
In a society so full of apologists for militarism, who substitute mindless justification for military operations in place of a critical, reasoned view of world events, Chomsky stands out for his courageous opposition to totalitarianism, wherever it is found. Apparently, this hiding place is alittle to close for some. Regardless of his critics, Chomsky is destined to go down in history as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century--an exemplary example of what an intellectual should be.

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Summary: A Mediocre Account of a Truly Phenomenal Figure
Review: If you're looking for an inspiring and comprehensive account of the life and thought of Noam Chomsky, this book might be somewhat disappointing. The language is a bit dry and the book is wanting in a detailed discussion of Chomsky's profound contributions to linguistics, philosophy, psychology and especially media studies and political analysis. It reads like a textbook at times, with a very dull prose and a barrage of boring facts. It would have been nicer if these facts could have been interspersed in some more extensive commentary, so as to make clear their relevence. Also, the author doesn't do a good job of explaining Chomsky's position on a number of issues - he merely states what the position is. For example, he mentions that Chomsky is critical of Israel, but doesn't include a thorough discussion explaining why. Without such a discussion, it would be difficult to appreciate Chomsky's remarkably sophisticated position on this issue and the many others that were not elaborated in the book.

That's not to say that it was a total disappointment. There are some good chronologies of Chomsky's linguistic work and his academic appointments. On the other hand, however, the author paid almost no attention to Chomksy's political and media analyses from the 80's onward. There is no discussion of Manufacturing Consent (the book), Deterring Democracy, Necessary Illusions, Profits over People, etc. There is no discussion of his analysis of the Gulf War, the U.S. record on human rights, the U.S. military establishment, corporate domination in the global economy, and on and on. Some of Chomsky's best work can be found in his lectures and books on these issues. Sadly, they are hardly mentioned by the author.

Those interested in learning about Chomsky shouldn't start with this book. Rather, Chronicles of Dissent and the documentary Manufacturing Consent are much better starting points.

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Summary: A superficial and pointless hagiography
Review: It is difficult to see the point of this volume, which is far too short and shallow to characterise as intellectual biography and does nothing to illuminate its subject's record of enthusiasm for dubious political causes that have dismayed even his admirers. The book deals superficially with Chomsky's work on linguistics, while often evidencing a perplexing lack of awareness of important political and economic issues (and a bizarre attention to entirely trivial historical figures such as obscure groups of Bundist socialists). Though Barsky is a professor of literature (and indeed perhaps that explains his inadequate treatment of politics), his book bears the hallmarks of a breathless undergraduate sending out admiring letters to his hero; not coincidentally, the information gleaned from such letters makes up substantial parts of the book.

The book is very short on sustained, still less critical, analysis of Chomsky's political polemics. At no point does Barsky examine Chomsky's hostility (in Profit Over People, among other places) to the cause of trade liberalisation, let alone note the flagrant self-contradiction inherent in this position relative to Chomsky's complaint that US foreign policy pays inadequate attention to international institutions. (What, after all, is the difference between the International Court at the Hague and the World Trade Organisation, for both are supra-national institutions that require the support of sovereign member-states if they are to be effective?) The ultimate vacuity of this book is displayed, however, in its offensively facile apologetics for the incidents that, more than anything else, have destroyed Chomsky's reputation for fair-minded and disinterested political commentary. The causal reader might have expected there to be some hard-headed critical thinking about why even the New York Review of Books will not run Chomsky's writings (whereas it regularly ran the articles of the late I.F.Stone, whose hostility to the United States and Israel was no less virulent than Chomsky's). Barsky fails to provide any. He does not explicate Chomsky's repeated polemics in the 1970s whitewashing the genocide practised by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and he comprehensively obfuscates Chomsky's notorious description of the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson's as 'a sort of relatively apolitical liberal'. On the latter question, Barsky usefully sums up the intellectual depth of his own work by claiming Chomsky's kinship with - so help me - Voltaire. According to Barsky, Chomsky's sympathetic characterisation of an apologist for Nazi Germany was in fact merely a defence of free speech. Persisting with this ludicrous claim and risible comparison, Barsky asserts, "Voltaire himself was admonished for what could be considered a consistent application of classical liberal principles in public affairs, summed up by his famous dictum 'I disagree with everything you say, but I shall fight to the death for your right to say it'."

Voltaire, of course, said nothing of the kind: Barsky's 'quotation' is spurious. And that just about sums up the usefulness of this book. if you are a Chomsky admirer, you would in any case be well-advised to skip Chomsky - whose recent work was described by his friend Christopher Hitchens as being 'soft on fascism' - and devote time instead to reading some genuine scholars of politics and economics (Isaiah Berlin, Michael Oakeshott, Daniel Bell, James Tobin, Franco Modigliani, George Stigler).

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Summary: enjoyable but biased account of a brilliant thinker
Review: This is the most recent of several books I've read by or about Noam Chomsky, and I'm still waiting for an objective, critical analysis of the man and his thinking. Though quite enjoyable and full of interesting details (like cover photos of obscure political magazines that Chomsky read as a child), Barsky's biography comes clearly from the pen of someone enamored of Chomsky's ideas and work. The last paragraph of the book sounds embarrasingly like the voiceover from a low-budget propaganda film. Chomsky fans will enjoy the book, but anyone wanting a more balanced approach will still have to wait for the "definitive biography", which to my knowledge remains unwritten.

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Summary: Full Text online version of Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
Review: You can access a full text electronic version of Robert Barsky's "Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent" at http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/chomsky Please stop by and browse...... Marney Smyth

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Summary: Full Electronic Text at http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/chomsky
Review: You can access a full text electronic version of Robert Barsky's "Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent" at http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/chomsky Please stop by and browse.....