Hayek’s sudden American celebrity from The Road to Serfdom discomforted him deeply

Evidence

A commercial lecture agency had lined up an array of public lectures across eleven states, beginning with a radio address to an overfl ow crowd of more than 3,000 the day after his arrival in New York. Hayek maintained the cultivated reserve and unabashed elitism of a Viennese aristocrat, and did not take well to this new position. An interviewer at the time dwelled on his “purely academic” demeanor, and an observer at his fi rst press conference recounted that he had “small, sensitive hands which he seemed at a loss to know what to do with when he was not lighting his lowslung briar pipe.” De cades later Hayek recalled his shock at the dictating machines and microphones that greeted him at his fi rst public event. Hayek’s uneasy relationship with his pop ular persona had begun. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 222

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reader’s Digest’s abridgment made Hayek famous in America — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 221; Hayek’s public image was constructed by political appropriation, not his own text — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 228; Chicago economists rejected Hayek because Road to Serfdom was too popular a work — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 786 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek’s public image was constructed by political appropriation, not his own text #corroborates (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 228
• Hayek’s pessimism about the present coexisted with long-term confidence in his ideas #qualifies (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 86
• Chicago economists rejected Hayek because Road to Serfdom was too popular a work #complicates (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 786
• Hayek’s American Road project was subordinate to a larger liberal movement #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 737