The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki. - Hardcover

Reich-Ranicki, Marcel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691090408 ISBN 13: 9780691090405

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Marcel Reich-Ranicki is remarkable for both his unlikely life story and his brilliant career as the "pope of German letters." His sublimely written autobiography is at once a fascinating adventure tale, an unusual account of German-Jewish relations, a personal rumination on who's who in German culture, and a love letter to literature.

Reich-Ranicki's life took him from middle-class childhood to wartime misery to the heights of intellectual celebrity. Born into a Jewish family in Poland in 1920, he moved to Berlin as a boy. There he discovered his passion for literature and began a complex affair with German culture. In 1938, his family was deported back to Poland, where German occupation forced him into the Warsaw Ghetto. As a member of the Jewish resistance, a translator for the Jewish Council, and a man who personally experienced the ghetto's inhumane conditions, Reich-Ranicki gained both a bird's-eye and ground-level view of Nazi barbarism. Written with subtlety and intelligence, his account of this episode is among the most compelling and dramatic ever recorded.

He escaped with his wife and spent two years hiding in the cellar of Polish peasants―an incident later immortalized by Günter Grass. After liberation, he joined and then fell out with the Communist Party and was temporarily imprisoned. He began writing and soon became Poland's foremost critical commentator on German literature.

When Reich-Ranicki returned to Germany in 1958, his rise was meteoric. In short order, he claimed national celebrity and notoriety as the head of the literary section of the leading newspaper and host of his own television program. He frequently flabbergasted viewers with his bold pronouncements and flexed his power to make or break a writer's career. His list of friends and enemies rapidly expanded to include every influential player on the German literary scene, including Grass and Heinrich Böll. This, together with his keen critical instincts, makes his memoir an indispensable guide to contemporary German culture as well as an absorbing eyewitness history of some of the twentieth century's most important events.

About this title

About the Author

Marcel Reich-Ranicki writes for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and hosts the prime-time television show Das Literarische Quartett. He is the author of numerous books on German and Polish literature, including Thomas Mann and His Family.

From the Back Cover

"This is an extraordinary autobiography written in a unique style that is very smooth, conversational, and frank. Reich-Ranicki is the most important literary critic on the German scene and has had a singular influence on German culture. His life reads like a novel."--Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota

"This is a remarkable book. Reich-Ranicki has produced a beautifully written and sharply observed testament to a lifelong love/hate relationship with the Germany that fascinated him as a youth, destroyed his family and his prewar world, and finally--ambivalently and deeply ironically--anointed him as its pope of literature."--Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union

From the Inside Flap

"This is an extraordinary autobiography written in a unique style that is very smooth, conversational, and frank. Reich-Ranicki is the most important literary critic on the German scene and has had a singular influence on German culture. His life reads like a novel."--Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota

"This is a remarkable book. Reich-Ranicki has produced a beautifully written and sharply observed testament to a lifelong love/hate relationship with the Germany that fascinated him as a youth, destroyed his family and his prewar world, and finally--ambivalently and deeply ironically--anointed him as its pope of literature."--Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union

Reviews

From the German critic whose "word can make or break a writer's career" (according to Jack Zipes I his foreword) comes The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki, translated by Ewald Osers. In describing his Polish childhood, experiences during WWII (his Jewish family's annihilation; his harrowing escape from the Warsaw ghetto with his wife), postwar stint with the Polish secret service, expulsion from the Communist Party and resulting ostracism in Poland, early career as a book reviewer and rising star upon moving to Germany, Reich-Ranicki examines issues of identity ("I have... no homeland.... On the other hand, I am not... entirely... without a country"), reconciliation ("to hate properly, for any length of time no, that I could never do") and many things literary ("the boldest and most original ideas... spawn pitiful books, while seemingly absurd motifs can result in magnificent novels"). Spanning much of the 20th century's horror and literary activity, this moving, erudite autobiography (the top-seller in Germany for 53 weeks) makes an important contribution to Holocaust literature.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Reich-Ranicki, one of Germany's foremost contemporary literary critics, or "the pope of German letters," declares in the first chapter of this autobiography that he is "half Polish, half German, and wholly Jewish." Born in Poland in 1920, he moved to Berlin as a boy, where he developed his passion for literature before his family was deported by the Nazis and forced into the Warsaw ghetto. Following the war years and the loss of most of his family, he returned to Germany to a highly successful literary career. Reich-Ranicki's account of life in the Polish ghetto are some of the most vivid and compelling ever written. The main thread of this autobiography, however, is the author's complex relationship to Germany in general and the German language in particular. The issue explored throughout is how a civilized nation of high culture carried out war and the Holocaust and, on a more immediate level, how and why a Jew like Reich-Ranicki was able to reconcile himself to a country that perpetrated such horrors. This book headed the German best-sellers list for more than a year when it came out in 2001. Strongly recommended for all academic libraries, large literary collections, and all other libraries with any interest in the history of the Holocaust. Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691090408
• ISBN 13: 9780691090405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 404