Sketches from a Life

by George F. Kennan

Written originally as a series of entries in a travel diary and now considered one of the most important memoirs of our time, Sketches from a Life is George F. Kennan's peerless, impressionistic record of his experiences with twentieth-century history. Beginning with his first foreign service post in 1927 and ending seven decades later, Kennan's account is rich with the insight of a major historical participant. Whether relating the perils of Hitler's Germany or revisiting Kennan's days as ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sketches from a Life is as riveting as great literature, and one of the most invaluable documents of our time.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Biography, Travel

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

From Wikipedia:

George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.

In the late 1940s, his writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union, thrusting him into a lifelong role as a leading authority on the Cold War. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow in 1946, and the subsequent 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. These texts quickly emerged as foundational texts of the Cold War, expressing the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet Union policy. Kennan also played a leading role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, most notably the Marshall Plan.

Shortly after the diploma had been enshrined as official U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the policies that he had seemingly helped launch. By mid-1948, he was convinced that the situation in Western Europe had improved to the point where negotiations could be initiated with Moscow. The suggestion did not resonate within the Truman administration, and Kennan's influence was increasingly marginalized—particularly after Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in 1949. As U.S. Cold War strategy assumed a more aggressive and militaristic tone, Kennan bemoaned what he called a misinterpretation of his thinking.

In 1950, Kennan left the Department of State, except for two brief ambassadorial stints in Moscow and Yugoslavia, and became a leading realist critic of U.S. foreign policy. He continued to be a leading thinker in international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death at age 101 in March 2005.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Sketches from a Life" is apparently diplomat George F. Kennan's pan drippings from his official memoirs - actual diary entries spanning from 1927 to 1988 in which he describes his European, Russian, and American travels, his sailing trips, sojourns at his Pennsylvania farm. The first half of the book is headed "The Foreign Service" and the second, "Academia," although I found these titles in no way described what followed.

Even as a young man Kennan excreted stilted, purple, old man prose: "It is all too rich, too full, this summer day," he burbled in Riga, 1929. In 1938 "a sterner age was upon us." In middle age, dismissed from the Foreign Service, he searched for the receptionist to say goodbye: "I went up, therefore, and took leave of her." Visiting friends in Denmark in 1958, he might as well have been living in the 18th century: "Wishing to disembarrass my hosts of my presence, I proclaimed my intention of going away for a day's excursion."

The people Kennan ran into on his travels in the U.S. usually failed to meet his expectations. They were hicks who spoke with hillbilly twangs, or loud uncouth talkers on trains, or they weren't like him and therefore represented an America in decline. On the south side of Chicago in 1951 "you met men with no hats, blue overcoats, no ties, hair uncombed, shoestrings dragging. They all looked as though they had hangovers. On a street corner three older men stood silent and motionless staring up a side street. I looked, too, but could not see what they were staring at."

In the Santa Clara Valley in California in 1956 he saw agricultural workers, "wetbacks, working in gangs..."

In 1959 he was struck by the contrast between German society, which had been through two world wars, and Switzerland, which hadn't. The Swiss had a "wonderful feeling of intactness, both in space and in time." The effect on German family life was dire; "the women on the German side had also been in some way affected by the disintegration and looseness of values. They had the sheer, coarse, sexual attractiveness of primitive women....in Germany the children of this age are the products of the catch-as-catch-can sexual mores that have prevailed in that country for the past forty years. Here, by consequence, the sultry belle of the streets has taken a prominent share in motherhood. Her children show it."

Delivering lectures at Ripon College in 1965, he reflected that having women on campus made the atmosphere more relaxed. But did it align with the purpose of education, which apparently is to make men smarter? "I thought of the recent demand of the Princeton college editors for coeducation at Princeton. Plainly, it would be easier, softer, more comfortable, with women around. Life would be more agreeably homogenized, less harshly stratified into the components of term and vacation, of study and recreation, of indulgence and abstention. But would the intellect benefit? The intellect, after all, was a lazy, sluggish faculty. Its growth occurred only under discipline and discomfort. It had to be scourged into the unfolding of its powers. This was why the great environments for the flowering of the spirit had been not the sunlit gardens of California or Florida, but rather the dark, cold rainy ones – the ones that involved deprivation, personal discomfort, loneliness, and boredom. Coeducation produced, no doubt, better-adjusted people; but was there not a certain conflict between this ease of life and the training of the mind."

Kennan was an elitist. He believed that monarchies set the tone for society, that their grandeur and extravagance created a model for the common person to admire. Gazing up at such superior beings in their huge impractical palaces inspired visions which helped people live "through the low moments of history, surviving what would otherwise have been unadulterated squalor, hopeless and intolerable."

(Kennan's Wikipedia page quotes a 1935 letter to his sister in which he wrote, "I hate democracy....I hate the 'peepul'; I have become clearly un-American.")

Although Kennan worked for Democratic presidents, he scorned the welfare state. On a Danish ferry in 1977 he viewed the passengers with disapproval: "Europeans all, mostly German motor tourists; a number of young couples, blue-jeaned and, on the male side, bearded...occupants, all of them, of the intellectual and spiritual vacuum which the European welfare state produces..."

Visiting his wife's cousins in Oslo, their home "the epitome of haute-bourgeois comfort and good taste", the walls lined with "Munchs and other fine paintings", Kennan reflected bitterly how theirs was a disappearing way of life, replaced by and sacrificed to "the ideal of the welfare state, to the prevailing egalitarianism, to the frantic urbanization" in which pensioners and others dependent on public subsidies "huddle together". He suspected that the goal of the welfare state was "not that more people should live really well, but that no one should."

In Norway in 1978 he rued how few deep-sea fisherman were left, blaming it on unions and the high wages of other industries: "For what young man wants to accept, these days, the hardships of deep-sea fishing – the cold wet clothes, the endless rolling and pitching, the hauling of the heavy nets in the night, the jelly-fish burns, the lack of regular sleep – when he could be earning fantastic wages on the oil rigs, or in industry, protected by the union, doing only a minimum of work, and defying with relative impunity the authority of the foreman?" Low-paying and punitive is what a proper job should be.

Perhaps he was nowhere more supercilious than in Colorado Springs to lecture at the Air Force Academy in 1977. Driving across the prairie he spied "the trashy, impermanent habitation of the American West - trailer camps, condominiums, commercial enterprises - but all strewn about....four-lane arteries of dark asphalt...stretching endlessly across the emptiness....Strange people, these Americans: they seek out such places as these, I suspect, not really to live but to await death", drugged by television and sedated by their cars, none of their enjoyments real but all vicarious. The ugliness of one's surroundings for him was a sign of one's own moral and spiritual failings.

Kennan never knew his mother, who died when he was two months old. In one of the diary entries he communes with his long-dead father, "a man whom almost no one understood and whom I myself came to understand properly only after he was gone; a man whom I must have hurt a thousand times in my boyhood, by inattention, by callousness, by that exaggerated shyness and fear of demonstrativeness which is a form of cowardice and a congenital weakness of the family." He was full of regret for his selfishness, and imagined his father's forgiveness.

[Eric Bottern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perspective is a little distorted after I read a review about 3/4 of the way through the book and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Kennan has this view that the bourgeoise are the thread holding society together and that a majority of people are just freeloading grifters.

He is a great author and certainly has a way with words which propped the book up, but hard to avoid the content. Everywhere in America is “trashy” all the way up highway 1, yet he finds the time to rip into the Europeans. The same Europeans that he says hold together the fabric of American society and culture. I think the back half of the book is just reminiscing too hard about the america he grew up in and the Europe he remembers from his early professional years.

[Herb Hastings · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written collection of diary entries from a long and eventful life. Most are musings and descriptions of travel. In this time of rude, insulting tweets being churned out by our political leaders, it is nice to remember that there was a time when American government officials could express themselves with grace, intelligence and sensitivity. The best way I can convey the nature of this book is to quote a few passages.

"I should like to have lived in the days when a visit was a matter of months, when political and social problems were regarded from simple standpoints called "liberal" and "conservative", when foreign countries were still foreign , when a vast part of the world always bore the glamour of the great unknown, when there were still wars worth fighting and gods worth worshiping. " 9/20/1927

"The main change has been the wearing of the stars by the Jews.That is a fantastically barbaric thing. I shall never forget the faces of the people in the subway with the great yellow star sewed onto their overcoats, standing, staring straight ahead of them with eyes like terrified beasts-nor the sight of little children running around with those badges sewn on them." Berlin 10/21/1941

"California reminds me of the popular American Protestant concept of heaven: there is always a reasonable flow of new arrivals; one meets many-not all-of one's friends; people spend a good deal of their time congratulating each other over the fact that they are there; discontent would be unthinkable; and the newcomer is slightly disconcerted to realize that now-the devil having been banished and virtue being triumphant-nothing terribly interesting can ever happen again."
5/13/1956
If you can find a copy of this book, grab it and keep it on your bed side table, and each evening take a little journey with Mr. Kennan.

[Harald · Rating 2 out of 5]

These sketches contain memories, observations, and reflections mostly from travels spanning sixty years - from 1927 to 1988. Although drawn from contemporary diaries and letters, the short pieces show a remarkable consistency in mood and outlook throughout, mixing wistfulness, bordering on nostalgia, for the past with dark forebodings about a soulless future. The old specialist on Russian history and politics relishes warm personal words from Mr. Gorbachev on a visit to the US in 1988, but fails - like most of us at the time - to understand the implications of the perestroika era.

The weather on Mr. Kennan's travels seems to be consistently rainy, windy, and chilly. Particularly harrowing is a sailing trip across the Skagerrak in a full gale storm at the time when the author is 74.

[Jack Haefner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Supremely enjoyable book. I'd almost classify it as a travelogue. Documenting his decades in foreign service and academia, this book is rich in personal observation. Spoiler: if you're looking for the inside scoop that covers his falling-out with Acheson and Dulles, you will be disappointed. But this book fills in all the background that punctuates our lives: weekend excursions, long train rides, and personal reflection.

[James Junke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and enlightening read. Especially trenchant on anything Soviet/Russian. His insights on the time of Stalin are readily translatable to Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. Book ends in 1988, so must see what he has to say about 1989 onwards. His travel and sailing adventures were fun to read and his heartfelt attempts to understand his relationship with his father were remarkable. A brilliant mind, a modest person.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read and liked Kennan's memoirs covering 1925-1950, then seeing an exerpt from this, it seemed like a "must-read." Now I'm very glad I read it, but I wouldn't call it a slam-dunk "enjoyable" read. Yes, there's lots to enjoy -- his writing is wonderful and some of his descriptions are poetic -- but it's wistful throughout. Kennan was complex and apparently often unhappy with the world around him, but he was an excellent observer with a keen power of reflection. His sense of "lost in time" sometimes rings home with me . . . as in "I miss the way things were" -- both physically and spiritually. The preface and the epilogue tell the whole story -- anyone picking up this book would do well to read both at once, then get into the rest of the book.

[Jerie Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Kennan was a diplomat and historian. He was ambassador to Berlin until the U.S. declared war (and was then held for six months in Germany). Later he was ambassador to Moscow. Kennan was an architect of the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine. As the U.S. became more rabidly anti-Soviet he argued, against the tide, that he had favored political and economic strategies rather than military methods of containment, and ultimately Kennan became a non-person in government. This memoir is more about his travels, not history, and it is interesting to see him mature. Looking forward to reading more heavy-duty stuff by him - two Pulitzers.

[Jonnie Enloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Kennan, little know today, was a real pioneer. He alone was instrumental in exposing to the world the worst conditions possible in the world in Russia. Then came the communists and Stalin and the bad things got worse. Kennan worked for the US government and Russian people to hold the Soviet government accountable. He was as knowledgeable about Russian affairs as Arman Hammer.

You have to be interested in Russian civilization and culture to endure this, else you will put it down and never pick it up again.

[Steve Schoenbeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this interesting as a travel narrative, but it is not a book that deals with Kennan's views on diplomacy or diplomatic history.

[Dianne Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oddly interesting to me...

[Bill Tress · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Sketches from A Life” is exactly what Kennan provides us in this narrative. Vignette’s of a life well lived, written with passion, beautiful prose and insight into the human psyche. It is a travelogue through Russia, Finland, Norway, Ukraine augmented by the brilliant writing style of a highly educated man.
Kennan’s sketches provide a pictorial journey in words describing the land and its people including the vices and virtues of all the countries he visits. Saint Petersburg is sketched with admiration for its history, its architecture and its people. He beautifully describes a visit to the Piskarevskoye Cemetery where the victims of the siege of the city in the second World War, some 800,000 of them are buried. He found it impressive combined with a sense of hush, horror and sadness which lies over the place. The feeling is that one is in the presence of tragedy beyond the capacity of imagination.
These sketches avoid in-depth analysis of the politics, yet, on many occasions he bemoans the loss of all that was great in the pre-war era, including the monarchies that Kennan felt did provide a depth of culture and refinement that made Europe special.
Kennan makes numerous comments about the stupidity of war and its terrible impact on the European culture, never to be reclaimed. He forecasts that man will eventually destroy himself and the planet. He astutely articulates what communism is about and how it has crushed the spirit of the people impacted by it and particularly his beloved Russia. He states, that communism has destroyed the spirit of all who encounter its falseness and hatefulness and demagoguery. He believes the Russian people deal with its savage regulation by emotional withdraw and mute despair.
Beyond the wisdom and delightful prose, he states that he would have liked to have lived in the days when a visit was a matter of months, i.e. a simpler time. When political and social problems were regarded from simple standpoints called liberal and conservative, when foreign countries were still foreign, and a vast part of the world bore the glamour of the great unknown. While he looks to the past with fond regard, he sees and understands the present, yet, he fears the future.
These delightful sketches at times expect the reader to know things that are not stated in the sketch, these essays presume that the reader knows George F. Kennan. An example of the presumption appears when he is discussing a return to the American embassy in Moscow after many years. He states that the building appears as it did in the days of my own unhappy ambassadorship. This remark is just left hanging for the reader to ponder about the unhappiness. There are quite a few of these scenario’s and this reviewer would recommend a biography and possibly a history of Kennan’s service at our State Department be read before reading this edition of his works. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner and all of his 18 books are worth reading, yet, having a background of his works will enhance the enjoyment of “Sketches From a Life”.