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A review by rbruehlman
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
3.0
My biggest impression: no wonder L. Ron Hubbard didn't like psychiatrists--the man sure needed one.
This book is exhaustingly researched, serving in the first half or so as a biography of L. Ron Hubbard, and the second half about Scientology in its more modern form under the leadership of David Miscavige. It features many accounts of people who have defected from the org over the years, in addition to rebuttals from certain key members of Scientology itself.
The book absolutely deserves credit in how thorough it is, but I really, really struggled to finish this book, and I can't figure out why! I love cults, I love abnormal psychology, I love sociology, I like history ... hell, I've read books similar in nature that I loved (Under the Banner of Heaven about Mormonism, Helter Skelter about Charles Manson), but I hit a wall about a hundred pages in, and my interest never recovered.
I think what was missing for me in the biography parts about L. Ron Hubbard was that I felt like it was a straight recounting of LRH's activities, but very little analysis of what drove LRH. Was he a sociopath? Was he a narcissist? Did he actually believe the stuff he said? Or was he a money-grubber? Lawrence Wright presents all the evidence for the reader to decide for themselves, should they so choose, but never seems to ponder the question himself. Instead, it felt like a factual play-by-play, which just ... felt flat? Personally, I suspect that L. Ron Hubbard was an egomaniac who loved power and commanding others and knowingly played with the truth for his own ends, but wasn't fully in touch with reality, either. When I compare L. Ron Hubbard to Charles Manson of Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter or Joseph Smith of Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, I felt like I had a much better understanding of why than I did here.
The second half of the book, particularly as it got into the Church of Scientology itself, was a bit more interesting and faster-paced, but it could be hard to follow with the number of people introduced. Steve Jobs, a veritable tome with as many characters, helpfully provided an index of people and their relationship to Steve Jobs; this book would have definitely benefitted from the same! There are so many people mentioned in this book that it is really hard to keep them all straight. I think having so many people mentioned, especially when their relevance / relation was hard to keep track of, weighted down the book somewhat, making it feel even longer than it was. Complicating matters, a few times it mentioned random accounts from defectors that did not have a lot to do with the surrounding text. Sometimes these people were mentioned again in more detail later, but other times, the account or person was never mentioned again, making it unclear why it was included at all.
I guess ultimately my opinion of the latter half of the book didn't improve that much because the writing style was dry. I can't put my finger on why I did not enjoy reading this book otherwise. All of the components were there for me to like it, and yet I just didn't.
I bet the documentary made from this book is interesting, at least.
This book is exhaustingly researched, serving in the first half or so as a biography of L. Ron Hubbard, and the second half about Scientology in its more modern form under the leadership of David Miscavige. It features many accounts of people who have defected from the org over the years, in addition to rebuttals from certain key members of Scientology itself.
The book absolutely deserves credit in how thorough it is, but I really, really struggled to finish this book, and I can't figure out why! I love cults, I love abnormal psychology, I love sociology, I like history ... hell, I've read books similar in nature that I loved (Under the Banner of Heaven about Mormonism, Helter Skelter about Charles Manson), but I hit a wall about a hundred pages in, and my interest never recovered.
I think what was missing for me in the biography parts about L. Ron Hubbard was that I felt like it was a straight recounting of LRH's activities, but very little analysis of what drove LRH. Was he a sociopath? Was he a narcissist? Did he actually believe the stuff he said? Or was he a money-grubber? Lawrence Wright presents all the evidence for the reader to decide for themselves, should they so choose, but never seems to ponder the question himself. Instead, it felt like a factual play-by-play, which just ... felt flat? Personally, I suspect that L. Ron Hubbard was an egomaniac who loved power and commanding others and knowingly played with the truth for his own ends, but wasn't fully in touch with reality, either. When I compare L. Ron Hubbard to Charles Manson of Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter or Joseph Smith of Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, I felt like I had a much better understanding of why than I did here.
The second half of the book, particularly as it got into the Church of Scientology itself, was a bit more interesting and faster-paced, but it could be hard to follow with the number of people introduced. Steve Jobs, a veritable tome with as many characters, helpfully provided an index of people and their relationship to Steve Jobs; this book would have definitely benefitted from the same! There are so many people mentioned in this book that it is really hard to keep them all straight. I think having so many people mentioned, especially when their relevance / relation was hard to keep track of, weighted down the book somewhat, making it feel even longer than it was. Complicating matters, a few times it mentioned random accounts from defectors that did not have a lot to do with the surrounding text. Sometimes these people were mentioned again in more detail later, but other times, the account or person was never mentioned again, making it unclear why it was included at all.
I guess ultimately my opinion of the latter half of the book didn't improve that much because the writing style was dry. I can't put my finger on why I did not enjoy reading this book otherwise. All of the components were there for me to like it, and yet I just didn't.
I bet the documentary made from this book is interesting, at least.