Synopses & Reviews
Review
“Few readers have studied the canonical texts of the great author-protagonists of the Frankfurt School without the secret desire to know more about their private lives. Djerassi’s historical fiction in dramatic form may come closer to the truth than any of the more empirical studies.”—Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University and the Collège de France
Review
“At once outrageous and beguiling, Foreplay boldly extrapolates from the known facts of its four real protagonists’ lives to create a spirited drama of entangled emotional intrigue and mordant wit. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and Tom Stoppard’s Travesties have found a worthy successor.”—Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley
Review
andldquo;As these two plays demonstrate, [Carl Djerassi] has developed a form of drama on scientific themes that is as entertaining as it is instructive.andrdquo;andmdash;David Lodge, author of The Year of Henry James and Author, Author
Review
andldquo;Carl Djerassi is in a unique position to dramatize . . . the ethical dimensions of the new technologies of reproduction. In addition, his clarity as a writer, and his sense of serious mischief as an agent provocateur, make these plays as compelling on the page as they are challenging on the stage.andrdquo;andmdash;Elaine Showalter, Princeton University, author of Sexual Anarchy
Review
“There should be more poetry books like Carl Djerassi's perfectly titled
A Diary of Pique 1983–1984. Among other things, it would make poetry a great deal more attractive to a great many people who may not think they're poetry readers but who respond to a good story, a playful use of language, and a dose of spice—not to mention intelligence that isn't out to advertise itself and feeling that's utterly stripped of sentimentality.”—Bruce Bawer,
The Hudson ReviewReview
“This edition of poems is a chance to know Djerassi that much more, to know something of the vexing nature of loss, and know something of the curative restitution that comes with the passing of time. We are indeed better for this book.”—
The Kenyon ReviewSynopsis
Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno were intellectual giants of the first half of the twentieth century. The drama Foreplay explores their deeply human and psychologically intriguing private lives, focusing on professional and personal jealousies, the mutual dislike of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, the association between Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, and the border between erotica and pornography. Djerassi’s extensive biographical research brings to light many fascinating details revealed in the dialogues among the characters, including Adorno’s obsession with his dreams, Benjamin’s admiration for Franz Kafka, and the intimate correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The introduction of a fictitious character, Fräulein X, intensifies the complex interplay among the four lead protagonists and allows for a comparison of Adorno’s philandering and the similar behavior of Martin Heidegger, whose affair with Hannah Arendt is well known. Foreplay brims with intrigue and the friction created when strong personalities clash.
Synopsis
Brimming with intrigue and the friction created when strong personalities clash, Foreplay explores the deeply human and psychologically fascinating private lives of twentieth-century intellectual giants Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, and Adorno’s wife Gretel.
Synopsis
Carl Djerassi is one of andldquo;the fathers of the Pillandrdquo;andmdash;he was awarded the National Medal of Science for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptiveandmdash;and has had a prolific additional career as a writer of fiction, plays, and dialogues about science. In these two plays, ICSI and Taboos, he dramatizes the social transformations and contested viewpoints created by advances in reproductive science and technology.
Synopsis
On May 8, 1983, Carl Djerassi is rejected by the great love of his life, the renowned literary scholar and biographer Diane Middlebrook. Wounded and angry, this man of science seeks solace and release in an unexpected way: writing free-verse poetry. Brutally open, Djerassi’s “poetic volcanic eruption” is the lyrical diary of a man full of anger and self-pity, grieving with unsparing honesty about the end of a relationship.
Offering deeply personal insights, the poems chronicle Djerassi’s emotional world in this period before the unexpected return of his beloved in 1984. He and Middlebrook married in 1985. Only some years after her death in 2007 did Djerassi return to these poems to revise them. They are published here for the first time, with German- and English-language versions on facing pages. The bilingual interplay between Djerassi’s mother tongue and his adopted literary language offers a richly intimate perspective on the scientist, the writer, the art connoisseur, and the romantic that is Carl Djerassi.
About the Author
“Few readers have studied the canonical texts of the great author-protagonists of the Frankfurt School without the secret desire to know more about their private lives. Djerassi’s historical fiction in dramatic form may come closer to the truth than any of the more empirical studies.”—Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University and the Collège de France
“At once outrageous and beguiling, Foreplay boldly extrapolates from the known facts of its four real protagonists’ lives to create a spirited drama of entangled emotional intrigue and mordant wit. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and Tom Stoppard’s Travesties have found a worthy successor.”—Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley
Table of Contents
Preamble
Curtain Raiser
Private revenge with a public touch
My muse is resentment, the poem my revenge
Hairshirt
Foreplay
Why are chemists not peots?
Deformation professionelle
There are no shrinks in Burma
L'uomo
"How do you spell your name?"
l'uomo vogue
My island
Nailed, plated and screwed
The next birthday
Donna mobile
Vocalissima
Push-pull
The art of rug-pulling
Grounds for divorce
Surprises
Lingonberries are not sufficient
Poetic justice
The others
Would you call me . . . ?
San Francisco, thirteenth floor
Hermaphrodite from North Carolina
Body-builder
Cocksure
"You wash this shirt like a chemist"
Mini-punk
Thirty-six hours
Abyssinia
Nine years is a long time
Contrapunctus
"I have nothing left to say"
Five years later
Godfather I
Godfather II
Already? Still?
Chef du potage
Truisms
An existence bonus
Not every no is the same
Sophistry
Plowing time
Stevensiana
"Two Egyptians being served by a Nazi"
Concordance browsing
The twins
Coda