The Last Days of Mankind

"When I was an undergraduate I went to the Edinburgh festival, and saw a brilliant production of The Last Days of Mankind which changed my life. I was entirely riveted by Kraus’s central theme, which is that the First World War could to some extent be understood as a media-driven event. Kraus’s conceit is that the war was such a great story for the Neue Freie Presse – the New York Times of Vienna [at the time] – that the newspaper had an interest in perpetuating it. It’s a tremendously modern work in the way that it represents the relationship between the media and warfare. And much of it isn’t written by Kraus at all, but is quotation of articles from the period. So to somebody who was already interested in the First World War, that was a very exciting revelation. I was also excited by Kraus’s language. Even in translation, it is clear that he was an extraordinary writer. That famous quote turned out to be pretty good as a predictor of what was happening in the wake of the war. Kraus gets high marks. Do we have any such experimental laboratories today? I think we probably have an equivalent in the Middle East. Also, what made 20th century Europe a dangerous place was that there were empires in decline. Today, you have an empire in decline in the form of the United States. So my 21st century version of Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind would be Al Jazeera and CNN rather than the Neue Freie Presse ."