by Walter Benjamin ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1994
Demanding yet eloquent and immensely rewarding personal documents of one of the century's leading literary and aesthetic critics. It's the grimmest of ironies that one of the earliest letters here should find the young philosopher standing metaphorically ``at a border crossing''—for Benjamin would end his life by his own despairing hand at a Spanish frontier post in 1940, his entry barred as he fled the advancing Nazi armies. Yet that image of the perpetual traveler on the threshold well suits the writer portrayed in these letters: equally a self-professed materialist devoted to the modern age and a bibliophile immersed in the literary past; close to many circles—Adorno and the Frankfurt School, Brecht's literary collective, Gershom Scholem's Zionism (the three men were among his correspondents, as well)—yet fully a member of none; a voracious consumer of the world yet always something of an outsider. The most bleakly memorable section here is the letters- -almost half the total—recording Benjamin's long and lonely years of exile, beginning with Hitler's seizure of power and ending with his own death. Here Benjamin faces up to his own uncertain prospects, as the material means for his work—living space, even the writing paper he coveted—dwindle and vanish. Constantly changing postmarks bear witness to his peripatetic and increasingly desperate search for refuge; above all, he bears witness to his growing sense of emotional and intellectual isolation. Yet he sets to his work, ``the shelter I step beneath when the weather grows rough outside,'' to recover something from the very culture whose collapse is about to engulf him—a quixotic venture that nevertheless compels our admiration. Unfortunately, this volume—simply a translation, with no new editorial apparatus, of the 30-year-old German edition—is a little unforgiving on the general reader: It's a shame the publisher hasn't supplied more biographical, historical, and cultural context to encourage nonspecialists to make Benjamin's fascinating acquaintance.
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-226-04237-5
Page Count: 680
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
Share your opinion of this book
More by Theodor W. Adorno
BOOK REVIEW
by Theodor W. Adorno & Walter Benjamin & translated by Nicholas Walker & edited by Henri Lonitz
BOOK REVIEW
by Walter Benjamin & translated by Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.