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This title in other editions

Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir

by Anatole Broyard

Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir Cover

 

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

"Nineteen forty-six was a good time — perhaps the best time — in the twentieth century. The war was over and there was a terrific sense of coming back, of repossessing life. Rents were cheap, restaurants were cheap, and it seemed to me that happiness itself might be cheaply had."

Broyard made his first bid for happiness by moving in with a young painter, the difficult and challenging Sheri Donatti — a protegee of Anais Nin — who never wore underpants and who "embodied the new trends in art, sex, and psychosis." Broyard tells their story; by turns comic and poignant, while describing along the way his meetings with Caitlan and Dylan Thomas, Delmore Schwartz, Dwight MacDonald, Maya Deren, William Gaddis, and other writers and artists just beginning their careers. He opens a bookstore on Cornelia Street ("If it hadn't been for books we would have been entirely at the mercy of sex. Books steadied us, they gave us gravity."). He goes to the New School and listens to Eric Fromm, Karen Horney and Meyer Shapiro ("I went to him as students, twenty years later, would go to India."). He tries going to a psychoanalysist ("I never gave him a chance. l had a literature rather than a personality.").

In dazzling prose, Broyard captures with crystalline clarity the feeling of a particular time and place "when everything mattered, everything was serious." With economy, style, wit, flair, and astounding powers of observation, Broyard has left us a most remarkable memoir.

Review:

"Brilliant, funny, penetrating observations on life and culture in N.Y.C. after WWII." Kirkus Reviews

Synopsis:

What Hemingway's A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s, this charming yet undeceivable memoir does for Greenwich Village in the late 1940s. In 1946, Anatole Broyard was a dapper, earnest, fledgling avant-gardist, intoxicated by books, sex, and the neighborhood that offered both in such abundance. Stylish written, mercurially witty, imbued with insights that are both affectionate and astringent, this memoir offers an indelible portrait of a lost bohemia.

About the Author

Anatole Broyard (1920–1990) was an American literary critic for The New York Times. In addition to his reviews and columns, he published several books during his lifetime, and his most autobiographical works, Intoxicated By My Illness and Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir were published after his death.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780679781264
Author:
Broyard, Anatole
Publisher:
Vintage Books
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Biography
Subject:
Authors
Subject:
Sociology - Urban
Subject:
Customs & Traditions
Subject:
Greenwich village (new york, n.y.)
Subject:
Biography-Literary
Copyright:
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Series:
Vintage
Publication Date:
19970631
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
160
Dimensions:
8.02x5.16x.43 in. .36 lbs.

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Related Subjects

Biography » Historical
Biography » Literary
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
History and Social Science » Literary History » United States » 20th Century
Languages » Foreign Languages » Spanish » Biography » Historical

Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir Used Trade Paper
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$6.50 In Stock
Product details 160 pages Vintage Books USA - English 9780679781264 Reviews:
"Review" by , "Brilliant, funny, penetrating observations on life and culture in N.Y.C. after WWII."
"Synopsis" by , What Hemingway's A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s, this charming yet undeceivable memoir does for Greenwich Village in the late 1940s. In 1946, Anatole Broyard was a dapper, earnest, fledgling avant-gardist, intoxicated by books, sex, and the neighborhood that offered both in such abundance. Stylish written, mercurially witty, imbued with insights that are both affectionate and astringent, this memoir offers an indelible portrait of a lost bohemia.
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