Music, Closed Societies, and Football

Hans Keller's book is a passionate defence of individualism in an age when its existence is becoming ever rarer. A prefatory chapter, `Thinkers of the World, Disunite!', expounds Keller's individualist credo. `Vienna, 1938', originally a radio talk, gives his riveting and terrifying account of how he escaped from Nazi Vienna in 1938. Two further chapters, on communist Prague and trends in contemporary psychoanalysis, expose the dangers of collectivism. The longest section of the book, on music, concentrates on the threat of dehumanisation at the centre of the author's own intellectual and emotional life. The finale, on football, suggests that in the relatively simply world of sport, the degeneration of individualism can be observed without difficulty.