John Fanning reviews two books – one, about the history of Austria’s capital, and another, a capitating novel about two digital nomad millennials
As the authentic becomes more difficult to distinguish from the artificial it is with much relief that I can recommend two books that are not only very real but very important. Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World by Richard Cockett is a fascinating, enlightening and thrilling account of the extraordinary number of geniuses, many of them Jewish, who populated the city in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1900 and the early 1930’s.
By then, many were forced to leave, mainly to the US, to escape Nazi concentration camps. Economists von Mises and von Hayek were central figures as were philosophers Wittgenstein and Popper, musicians Mahler and Schoenberg featured as well as psycho-analysts Freud and Jung and many, many more.
Viennese influence covered an amazingly wide range of cultural and intellectual activities and subjects from nuclear fission to shopping malls and fitted kitchens. There was unfortunately a dark side to this ferment of ideas; a growing interest in eugenics which did not go unnoticed by another resident; Adolf Hitler.
There were two critical features of the Viennese melting pot. One was that compared to comparable city of the time it was inhabited mainly by immigrants who intermingled in the city’s over 600 cafes. Secondly, and even more critically, cross-fertilisation of ideas was actively encouraged and, in the process, new disciplines and areas of academic study were developed.
In addition to the philosophers, economists, psychoanalysts, artists and musicians, Vienna produced one of the first business management thinkers, Peter Drucker (above), who subsequently achieved fame and fortune in the US, and is widely regarded as the inventor of the discipline of management and father of the MBA.
Women were also prominent in this maelstrom of ideas, none more so than the remarkable Herta Herzog, a social scientist who began working in Vienna in what we would now refer to as media research. She managed to escape to the US at the start of the war and joined leading ad agency McCann-Erickson, where she rose to deputy MD.
Herzog was involved in developing the theory of branding in the 1940’s and is credited with the invention of the focus group. Although like many talented 20th century women, she was never accorded the credit she deserved, although she did achieve a kind of fame as the thinly-disguised motivational researcher, Dr Greta Guttman, in Mad Men.
There were no rabbit holes in Vienna, developing as wide a hinterland as possible was de Riquier and this absorbing book demonstrates the benefits. How different from today’s quest for certainty and obsession with scientism. After all those intellectual fireworks, you’ll need some relief and there’s nothing better than a good novel to oblige. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico is not only enormously entertaining, but like the best contemporary novels can offer more insights into the zeitgeist than endless decks of market research reports.
‘Perfection is a beautifully observed novel which deserves wide readership especially among millennials from Ranelagh to Roundstone’ – John Fanning
It describes the modern-day lives of two digital nomad millennials who earn a comfortable living on their laptops from an assortment of branding and design assignments. Tom and Anna’s precise nationality is not disclosed except for vague references to Southern Europe. However, the translation by Sophie Hughes is so brilliant that you immediately assume Tom and Anna are English.
They live in a carefully curated apartment in a fashionable part of Berlin, and their lives revolve around partying, hip bars, cool restaurants, galleries and art openings all lived out on social media. They belong to an imprecise political left identified with speaking out against social injustice, donating to LGBTQ causes, only using Uber when it’s snowing and always leaving tips in cash. All very Sally Rooney.
Food is a particular marker. Leaving behind the high calorie, salty curries and spaghetti bolognese of their youth they have graduated to ‘dark bluish green kale and shiny emerald avocados’ served on ‘white enamel plates with a blue trim – garnished with pomegranate seeds and flecks of balsamic glaze’.
After a few years, an undefined sense of dissatisfaction creeps in. In their search for perfection, they have abandoned the messy reality of life but are not sufficiently self-aware to realise the truth of George Orwell’s line “Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness”.
… And finally, I’ve noticed an interesting new advertising campaign on buses and bus shelters. That in itself is unusual; there’s not much to enthuse about the current advertising landscape. I’m not completely sure what the ‘call to action’ is here but if it’s sticking it to the technocracy man, I’m all in favour.
It comes from a Swedish company, which is no surprise.
If the best ideas in the first quarter of the last century came from Vienna, the best ones now are coming from the Nordic countries.
John Fanning lectures on branding and marketing communications at the UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School; john.fanning44@gmail.com
