Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of Utopia

Thorkelson’s informative graphic biography of philosopher Herbert Marcuse includes a foreword by political activist Angela Davis, but just as revealing are the scathing antiendorsements directed at its subject. In 1967, Spiro Agnew demanded the University of California, San Diego, fire Marcuse, claiming that his lectures were “poisoning a lot of young lives.” The Ku Klux Klan also vowed to kill Marcuse, a Jewish-German refugee, if he didn’t leave the country. Thorkelson’s thoroughly researched biography, rendered in crowded pen-and-ink drawings, focuses on the ideas that made Marcuse a firebrand, rather than on his personal life. It concisely sums up the antiestablishment leftist’s complex and evolving arguments on power, patriarchy, and human possibility, while life events such as his marriages and children pop up only marginally. But Thorkelson’s art, reminiscent of Larry Gopnick’s Cartoon History series, spices up panels with visual gags and broad caricatures. Marcuse’s continued relevance in contemporary political turmoil is felt; as he’s quoted, just before his death in 1979, “I know wherein our most basic value judgments are rooted: In compassion, in our sense for the suffering of others.” The density of this Cliff Notes version of Marcuse’s place within 20th-century philosophy leaves the narrative hard to follow, but it’s a useful summary of Marcuse’s thinking for newbies more likely to pick up a comic book than his texts. [em](Mar.) [/em]