The author of himself : the life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki / Marcel Reich-Ranicki ; translated from the German by Ewald Osers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reich-Ranicki, Marcel.

Standardized Title:

Mein Leben. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reich-Ranicki, Marcel.

Critics--Germany--Biography.

Critics.

Germany.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 407 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2001.

Language Note:

Translated from the German.

Summary:

Marcel Reich-Ranicki was born of Polish Jewish parents in the Polish town of Wloclawek in 1920. At the age of nine he moved to Berlin, and it was at school there that he discovered his deep passion for literature and the theater. But in 1938, he was deported back to Poland, where he spent the war. Written with subtlety, intelligence, and lucidity, Reich-Ranicki's account of the Warsaw Ghetto and the relations between Poles and Jews, Poles and Germans, and Poles and Poles is one of the most compelling and dramatic ever recorded.

After the war, Reich-Ranicki spent two years in London as the Polish consul. Back in Poland and after falling out with the Communists in 1950, he turned to literary criticism and wrote -- exclusively on German literature -- for all the leading Polish newspapers. In 1958, Reich-Ranicki decided to return to Germany for good, hoping to be able to continue his work there.

His rise was meteoric. He began as a book reviewer and then became a national celebrity as head of the literary section of the leading German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. As the most influential book reviewer of postwar Germany, he rapidly acquired the reputation as "the Pope" of German letters.

As well as being a brilliantly related narrative of a remarkable and unusual life, this book is also a love letter to literature and the theater, especially the work of Shakespeare. It is also an indispensable guide to twentieth-century German culture. Reich-Ranicki has known all the eminent postwar German writers and has written about most of them -- often sharply criticizing their work, but just as frequently praising it. His outstanding book on Thomas Mann was published in English as Thomas Mann and his Family in 1988.

Contents:

1 'What Are You Really?' 3

2 'Half Dragged, Half Plunging, so He Sank ...' 14

3 Herr Kastner: 'To Be Applied to the Soul' 21

4 Reverence for Writ 29

5 Racial Theory 44

6 Several Love Affairs at the Same Time 54

7 My Most Wonderful Refuge

the Theatre 71

8 A Suffering which Brings Happiness 88

9 The Door to the Next Room 98

10 With Invisible Luggage 103

11 Poetry and the War 113

12 Hunting Down Jews Is Fun 123

13 The Dead Man and His Daughter 131

14 From Quarantine District to Ghetto 138

15 The Words of a Fool 144

16 'If Music Be the Food of Love ...' 151

17 Death Sentences to the Accompaniment of Viennese Waltzes 161

18 An Intellectual, a Martyr, a Hero 170

19 A Brand-new Riding Crop 176

20 Order, Hygiene, Discipline 183

21 Stories For Bolek 193

22 My First Shot, My Last Shot 209

23 From Reich to Ranicki 222

24 Brecht, Seghers, Huchel and Others 235

25 Josef K., Stalin Quotations and Heinrich Boll 247

26 A Study Trip with Consequences 261

27 A Young Man with a Massive Moustache 269

28 Recognized as Germans 281

29 Group 47 and its First Lady 287

30 Walter Jens, or the Friendship 297

31 Literature as Awareness of Life 304

32 Canetti, Adorno, Bernhard and Others 312

33 A Tavern and a Calculating Machine 327

34 The Sinister Guest of Honour 339

35 Make Way for Poetry! 344

36 A Genius only during Working Hours 353

37 The Magician's Family 358

38 Max Frisch 367

39 Yehudi Menuhin and Our Quartet 373

40 Joachim Fest and Martin Walser 382

41 ''Tis a Dream ...' 391

42 Thanksgiving 393.

Notes:

Includes index.

"First published in English by Weidenfeld and Nicolson and in German under the title "Mein Leben" c1999"--T.p. verso.

ISBN:

0691090408

OCLC:

47915502