The Three Lives of Jonathan Force

Out of his unpromising cultural background in the American Midwest, Jonathan Force manages in the course of his undergraduate years at Yale to establish an Archimedean point outside of all culture from which to view contemporary life. He becomes a famous psychologist, an internationally renowned social critic and pundit whose published books—Force Fields, Reasonable Force, Uses of Force—strike such surprising and resonant notes that, in the words of his contemporaries, the public has come to think with his ideas rather than about them.

 

In late middle life he experiences a personal revelation that will lead him to abandon his famous pundit persona altogether—and to move beyond the constricting limitations of “knowing it all.”