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More copies of this ISBNThe Vienna Paradoxby Marjorie Perloff
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The Vienna Paradox is Marjorie Perloff's memoir of growing up in pre-World War II Vienna, her escape to America in 1938 with her upper-middle-class, highly cultured, and largely assimilated Jewish family, and her self-transformation from the German-speaking Gabriele Mintz to the English-speaking Marjorie--who also happened to be the granddaughter of Richard Schüller, the Austrian foreign minister under Chancellor Dollfuss and a special delegate to the League of Nations. Compelling as the story is, this is hardly a conventional memoir. Rather, it interweaves biographical anecdote and family history with speculations on the historical development of early 20th-century Vienna as it was experienced by her parents' generation, and how the loss of their "high" culture affected the lives of these cultivated refugees in a democratic United States that was, and remains, deeply suspicious of perceived "elitism." This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading critics, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal. Review:"Since emigrating from Vienna with her family in 1938 at the age of six-and-a-half, the former Gabriele Mintz has made a reputation for herself under the penname Marjorie Perloff. Her books (The Dance of the Intellect; The Futurist Moment, etc.) have established her as one of the major American critics of 20th century modernist and late-modernist writing. In this memoir, she traces her intellectual and social development, showing how they were shaped by her experience as a refugee from a hostile territory that she would not see again until 1955, after she was married but still before she launched her career. Though Perloff works in resonances from Vienna's modernist artists throughout her book, most of it remains a straightforward telling of who her family was and is, and of how she navigated her way from the New York City schools to Oberlin College. Not a conventional coming-of-age memoir that processes things emotionally, Perloff's story of her youth hones in on the institutions, people and places that formed her logos, by chance and by choice. In that, it is entirely successful." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Book News Annotation:Salted with b&w family photos, the memoir of the literary critic
(humanities, emerita, Stanford U.) revisits her cultural roots in
pre-war Vienna. Perloff writes that she asked herself: What does it
mean to place High Culture on a pedestal, as her upper-class Jewish
community did? How did that culture relate to politics and ethnicity?
And what happened to Viennese culture when it was forced to
assimilate to the democracy of the United States—a democracy
deeply suspicious of distinctions between "high" and "low" unless
they are the clear-cut distinctions of wealth? The result juxtaposes
literary text, historical information, personal anecdote, family
memoir, and critical speculation.
Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis:A fascinating memoir of refugee flight and survival, intellectual yet highly personal, by one America's eminent literary critics. About the AuthorMarjorie Perloff is the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of the Humanities Emerita at Stanford University and the author and editor of over a dozen books on literary and art criticism as well as cultural history. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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