In Frederic Raphael's essays we meet familiar faces, known names, but
the way he reintroduces them to us, with a ruthless clarity which seeks
to conceal nothing, make us revalue them. Doubt is what keeps us from
the tyranny of bien pensant sentimentalism, from accepting the nostrums
of a journalised and televisualised culture.
The first man we meet in The Benefit of Doubt is a tutelary spirit of
Raphael's world, Primo Levi, a champion in the unequal fight between
civilization and barbarism in which every thinking person is to some
extent engaged. Other essays pursue Aristotle, Surrealism, Gore Vidal,
cultural criticism, Heidegger, biography, the emperor Hadrian,
translation, Arthur Koestler, the Jews, David Storey, the Greeks,
Schnitzler, Tom Cruise, Disney and Kubrick amongst other subjects.
On the Greeks...
...The Greeks had a long reputation for turning spitefully on those whom
they earlier blessed with fame. Even Themistocles (a dodgy character
before he became the hero of Salamis) ended his life working as a civil
servant for the Persians whom he had defeated. Few good deeds went
unpunished in a society riven by envy, toadyism, malice and libellous
recklessness on the part, for durable example, of Aristophanes, who
mocked and vilified the democracy which gave him, and others, the
freedom to do so.'
from Ancient and Modern
On Gore Vidal...
...Gore Vidal's life illustrates that, in order for a writer to be
famous, it is not enough to make friends who will speak well, and
audibly, about him. He also needs reliable enemies with whom he can pick
regular, newsworthy fights.'
from A Career and Its Moves
On movies and modern life
...The movie camera has had an incomparably more thorough, perhaps even
more narcissistic, effect on human behaviour. Who drives home after a
thriller without glancing in the mirror for the guys in the grey sedan?
Lovers learned to kiss longer, once they saw how the stars did it. Now
sex is a spectator sport which - who knows? - may soon have a World Cup.
When footballers roll in agony, French commentators call it cinéma.
Sincerity, honesty, wisdom are what look sincere, honest, wise. The
Buddha got it right: appearances are reality, at twenty-four frames a
second.
from Why Write Movies
