Book DescriptionA fascinating memoir of refugee flight and survival, intellectual yet highly personal, by one America"s eminent literary critics.
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 centralas the personal. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir (Marjorie Perloff)