James Kelman started his correspondence with Noam Chomsky in 1988. This book is not dissimilar in how correspondence between two individuals work in earnest: it's back-and-forth, torn between different subjects, and not always in agreement.

This book not only serves as a cachet of printed letters but also as a small biography of Chomsky, a sort of binder of speeches that Chomsky held while in the UK, and as a container for some of Kelman's political and humanist ideas.

At the start of this book, Kelman reaches for what is one of Chomsky's core political tenets: the idea that anarchy is a human tendency, what Bakunin called 'an instinct for freedom':

> Rousseau is an important thinker for Chomsky. It was what Rousseau perceived as the strength of the will to self-determination that led him to propose “the struggle for freedom [as] an essential human attribute.”

Kelman ponders on Chomsky's ideas of the so-called orthodox left:

> Arguments from human nature and fixed principles are usually regarded as reactionary by the orthodox left. They take it to lead to hierarchy, people being born to rule or to serve; people being born lazy or talented, being born good at mathematics, or at dancing or painting pictures, or being born selfish, etc. Such arguments are thought to suggest that we are not born free at all but are chained to our essential selves and thus have our lives, and the lives of our children, determined for us in ways that are forever beyond our own control. There may be elements of this that can be framed validly. Chomsky looks on “human nature … as a system of a sort familiar in the biological world, a system of ‘mental organs.’” Against the “left-liberal spectrum” his defense takes the following course: Human talents vary considerably, within a fixed framework that is characteristic of the species and that permits ample scope for creative work, including the creative work of appreciating the achievements of others. This should be a matter for delight rather than a condition to be abhorred. Those who assume otherwise must be adopting the tacit premise that people’s rights or social reward are somehow contingent on their abilities. But for most mainstream intellectuals a true democracy is a form of meritocracy, a system whereby highly educated specialists will be rewarded in accordance with the quantity of knowledge they have consumed in their specialist subject; in this kind of society a twenty-three-year-old university graduate will begin his or her working life at a salary some two to three times that of a woman or man who has spent the past thirty years working on a factory production line. As Chomsky has said, meritocracies “insofar as they exist at all, are simply a social malady to be overcome much as slavery had to be eliminated at an earlier stage of human history.” The basic principle of humankind is freedom, the right to not be tortured, the right to not be raped, the right to not be violated, the right to not be colonized in any way whatsoever. It is an inalienable right; whether it is deduced or whether it has to be discovered in any other manner is not of great significance—such questions can only be of ultimate interest to those whose ideological position is served by obscuring the issue. Either we do battle on behalf of the basic principle or we do not. This seems to me to be Chomsky’s position. It is not a new one but it remains as dangerous as ever. I cannot conceive of someone reading deeply on Chomsky’s work and failing to be moved by it. His writings are banned in some countries and anathema to the ruling minorities of most of the rest.

Kelman does a good job in contextualising some of Chomsky's main ideas of the time in contrast to a popular Western world-view at the time. Mainly, Kelman focuses on the Reagan and Thatcher administrations' ability to bring neoliberalism to the World.

I enjoyed reading Chomsky's letters to Kelman, which will no doubt be illuminated farther in the coming book by Beverly Stohl, who was Chomsky's personal assistant for 24 years.

> April 2, 2002
>
> Dear Jim,
>
> Some things never change, like my e-mail address, mail address, and crazy life, getting crazier all the time. Turkey was fascinating, particularly the Southeast, where I was able to spend a day. Am supposed to write something about it but have been so utterly overwhelmed that I haven’t been able to write about that or a thousand other things I’m supposed to do. Glad to hear about what you’re up to and look forward to seeing it in print—and I promise to understand. Will you be in Texas next fall? I recall that you were going up and back. I’ll be passing through Austin for a day or two on my endless rabble-rousing expeditions.
>
> Noam

The book contains many serious movements and addresses; US hegemony (Vietnam, Iraq, Central America, Sudan), universal grammar, the importance of activism, how propaganda works, colonialism... The list goes on.

In the end, this is an important and fragmented book. It is not as valuable as, for example, books that David Barsamian has made with Chomsky, but it has fervour, verve, and, most importantly, style that should interest most readers.

> As more freedom and rights are won, new methods are contrived to cage “the great beast,” as Alexander Hamilton called the people. ( )

There is a very human side to Noam Chomsky that the world normally does not see. Much like the acts of terror, crimes against humanity, atrocities, and corruption he exposes from governments and corporations, it remains hidden, hiding in plain sight. This other side of Chomsky is available in a surprising book by James Kelman, a Scottish novelist (of all things). It turns into a 30 yearlong story of friendship, respect, told by lots of letters and emails between them. In Between Thoughts and Expression Lies a Lifetime, Chomsky is co-operative, pleasant, self-deprecating, eager to please, and human.

In the late 80s, Kelman had to write a book review, and got so balled up in it, he ended up writing a long essay instead. One thing led to another and another, going where the research sent him. The essay is an enormous rollercoaster of a rant of what he learned from having to look up things like knowledge theory, in order to make sense of it all, even just to himself. It forced him to understand linguistics and Chomsky’s role, which he correlated to Chomsky’s public activism. The essay is a fairly comprehensive appreciation of those insights and accomplishments:

“Finding new ways of denying reality is a key function of the mainstream intelligentsia. Language provides unlimited opportunity for it. Before it is possible to enter any debate about the unspeakable atrocities being perpetrated on people every day of the week, in all parts of the world, a slow trudge through semantics has to begin. What do we mean by pain? What do we mean by suffering? Around this point the very words get surrounded, captured by inverted commas—e.g., what do we mean by ‘torture’—thus throwing into doubt the very existence of the experience. A distinction is created between the actual experience and the ‘concept of the experience.’ In creating this distinction, a closed system is put into operation: only those who specialize in discussing concepts will be admitted. The actual experience of atrocity becomes redundant. It becomes the predicate instead of the subject; we no longer refer to ‘atrocity,’ we refer to the ‘concept of atrocity,’ where concept is subject and atrocity predicate. Refugees’ reports are excluded … People who have been tortured do not have valid grounds for knowing what torture is.”

This sort of deconstruction is how lawyers get the guilty out of jams, how nations excuse their horrific behavior, and basically, how the world works. Kelman clearly got it.

But what came next is the stuff of fiction.

In a why-the-hell-not moment, Glasgow-based Kelman wrote to Chomsky at MIT and asked if he would address a small conference Kelman was trying to put together. Incredibly, despite an insanely busy life with bookings going out two years, Chomsky wanted in. It actually pained him to have to beg off at first due to back surgery, but far from blowing Kelman off, Chomsky made it his priority to attend. It was his first flight back on the road, after months of recuperating. In the meantime, the two of them kept in close touch, Kelman sending samples of his writings, and lots of encouragement and appreciation from Chomsky.

You have to understand this is what Chomsky is all about: a grassroots, totally amateur and ad hoc organization putting together a conference in a rundown building in the suburbs of Glasgow. A bunch of Scots, writers, academics and philosophers, all leaning left, gathering to hear and discuss “Self Determination and Power – How individuals Cope.” This is an anarchist’s dream come true. As Kelman put it: “If his work is about anything, it is about the primacy of the individual, the essential and fundamental common sense of each and every human being, the facility of thinking and judging for ourselves.” Chomsky could see that Kelman really got it.

The conference was a grand slam for Chomsky. It couldn’t have been more appropriate had he organized it himself. Not to put too fine a point on it, 30 years later Chomsky is still saying this was “the most memorable conference I ever attended.”

The book is a collection of documents around and beyond the conference: Kelman’s essay, emails and letters back and forth, Chomsky’s keynote address and a first night address specifically on Central America (with audience Q&A), an interview by a Scottish academic, an electronic interview Q&A between Kelman and Chomsky, and their continuing correspondence from then until today. It gets really behind the scenes and granular, like the difficulties Kelman had getting a paper check made out to Chomsky in US dollars, and thumbnail sketches of some of the those who would attend – well known in Scotland, but unknown to Chomsky.

Despite or because he had been incapacitated for several months, Chomsky’s keynote speech was top form. He was clear, direct, powerful and profound, not to mention snide and sarcastic. He bowled them over with dramatic point after dramatic point. I think if there’s a single piece Chomsky should be remembered for, it is arguably this keynote at the Glasgow conference in mid January, 1990:

“The intellectual elite is the most heavily indoctrinated sector [of society], for good reasons. It’s their role as secular priesthood to really believe the nonsense they put forth. Other people can repeat it, but it’s not that crucial that they believe it because, after all, they are the guardians of the faith. Except for the very rare person who’s just an outright liar, it’s hard to be a convincing exponent of the faith unless you’ve internalized it and come to believe it.“

Or this: “Control of thought is ‘more’ important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward. A despotic state can control its domestic enemy by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business.”

“The point is, in fact, far more general. The public must be reduced to passivity in the political realm, but for submissiveness to become a reliable trait, it must be entrenched in the realm of belief as well. The public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products. Eduardo Galleano writes that ‘the majority must resign itself to the consumption of fantasy. Illusions of wealth are sold to the poor, illusions of freedom to the oppressed, dreams of victory to the defeated and of power to the weak.’ That is the essential point.”

“To put the basic point crassly, unless the rich and powerful are satisfied, everyone will suffer, because they control the basic social levers, determining what will be produced and consumed, and what crumbs will filter down to their subjects. For the homeless in the streets, then, the primary objective is to ensure that the rich live happily in their mansions. This crucial factor, along with simple control over resources, severely limits the force on the side of the governed.”

And from his talk on Central America: “Countries should be free—free to do what we want them to do—and should choose their course independently, as long as their choice conforms to our interests. If they use the freedom we accord them unwisely then, naturally, we are entitled to respond in self-defense.”

The two-day Scotland trip might be a blip in what is now nearly 80 years of globetrotting global activism by Noam Chomsky. It made no headlines, and is not cited for its significance. That he still thinks it is the most memorable conference speaks volumes about who Chomsky is, but it is also true that he made it that memorable by pulling out all the stops in his talks and interviews associated with it. Kelman has now done a second great public service – putting it all in a behind-the-scenes book.

David Wineberg ( )