Research Catalog
The Vienna paradox : a memoir / by Marjorie Perloff.
- Title
- The Vienna paradox : a memoir / by Marjorie Perloff.
- Author
- Perloff, Marjorie
- Publication
- New York : New Directions Books, 2004.
Items in the Library & Off-site
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | PS29.P47 A3 2004 | Off-site |
Details
- Additional Authors
- New Directions Publishing
- Description
- xviii, 283 p. : ill.; 21 cm.
- Summary
- "The Vienna Paradox is the well-known literary critic 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 - a new American girl who also happened to be the granddaughter of Richard Schuller, 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, The Vienna Paradox 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. Moreover, Perloff explores 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 by one of America's leading thinkers, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal."--Jacket.
- Subject
- Perloff, Marjorie
- Perloff, Marjorie > Homes and haunts > Austria > Vienna
- Perloff, Marjorie > Childhood and youth
- Perloff, Marjorie > Family
- English teachers > United States > Biography
- Jewish refugees > United States > Biography
- Critics > United States > Biography
- Jewish families > Austria > Vienna
- Jewish families > United States
- Austrian Americans > Biography
- Vienna (Austria) > Biography
- Genre/Form
- Biographies
- Note
- "A New Directions Book."
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-274) and index.
- Processing Action (note)
- committed to retain
- Contents
- Prologue: Seductive Vienna -- Anschluss: March 1938 -- "German by the Grace of Goethe" -- Losing Everything But One's Accent: The Refugee Years -- Kultur, Kitsch, and Ethical Culture -- "To Turn into a Different Person" -- Family Tree.
- ISBN
- 0811215725 (acid-free paper)
- 0811215717 (acid-free paper)
- LCCN
- ^^2003028141
- OCLC
- 54007133
- SCSB-11398269
- Owning Institutions
- Harvard Library