Synopses & Reviews
Over thirty years after his death in 1983, Paul de Man, a hugely charismatic intellectual who created with deconstruction an ideology so pervasive that it threatened to topple the very foundations of literature, remains a haunting and still largely unexamined figure. Deeply influential, de Man and his theory-driven philosophy were so dominant that his passing received front-page coverage, suggesting that a cult hero, if not intellectual rock star, had met an untimely end.
Review
" revives the man and his fall. This time, we get a story of the professor not just as a young collaborator, but as a scheming careerist, an embezzler and forger who fled Belgium in order to avoid prison, a bigamist who abandoned his first three children, a deadbeat who left many rents and hotel bills unpaid, a liar who wormed his way into Harvard by falsifying records, a cynic who used people shamelessly... Compelling... Picaresque." Susan Rubin Suleiman
Review
"In this stunning biography...readers will marvel at how successfully de Man hid his misdeeds behind the luminous persona of a brilliant critical theorist, repeatedly using the plausibility of past lies to leverage yet larger new prevarications...An astonishing exposé." New York Times Book Review
Review
"Evelyn Barish tells us exactly why Paul de Man, a pioneer of Theory, should have favoured notions about the impossibility of an objective narrative or a fixed personality. Viewed objectively, the narrative of his own life was the story of a cheat and a liar; and he made up his personality as he went along. Yet he fooled one high-level American college after another into treating him as a genius. This is one of the most daunting portraits of a literary charlatan since A.J.A. Symons wrote the life of Baron Corvo." Bryce Christensen Booklist, starred review
Review
"A page-turner, is a brilliant piece of writing--dispassionate in its analysis, moving in its vision of a tortured man." Clive James, author of Cultural Amnesia
Review
"A riveting biography of master confidence man Paul de Man (1919-1983), manipulator of the facts and influential literary instructor--a character both preposterous and irresistible.... An extraordinary story of a complex personality presented with a wise dose of irony and respect." Diane Jacobs, author of Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sister
Review
"[De Man's] story, the story of a concealed past, was almost too perfect a synecdoche for everything that made people feel puzzled, threatened, or angry about literary theory. Evelyn Barish's new biography, (Liveright), is an important update on the story... [Barish] has an amazing tale to tell. In her account, all guns are smoking... Fascinating." Kirkus Reviews, Starred review
Review
"Impressively researched... Carefully documented... The story Barish tells is riveting. The de Man family closet was so packed with skeletons that they would have had to spill out into the living room." Louis Menand The New Yorker
Review
"[A] painstaking and probing account... Ultimately, a mark of Barish's achievement is that, by the end of her story, de Man confounds and eludes us no less than he did his contemporaries." Robert Alter New Republic
Review
"Barish adds much to our knowledge of this brilliant intellectual counterfeit." Robert Zaretsky The American Scholar
Synopsis
A landmark biography that reveals the secret past of one of the most influential academics of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Evelyn Barish is a professor at City University of New York's Graduate Center and its College of Staten Island, and the author of Emerson:The Roots of Prophecy, for which she won the Christian Gauss Award. She lives in New York City.