Missing Time: Essays, by Ari M. Brostoff

Ari Brostoff

ISBN 10: 1953813046 / ISBN 13: 9781953813046

Published by Paper Monument, US, 2022

About this Item

Over the past few years, in essays published in n+1, Jewish Currents, and elsewhere, Ari M. Brostoff has grappled with the intellectual upheavals and political contradictions that surfaced during the Trump era. After the breaking point of the 2016 election, Brostoff writes, "the world came back into hideous focus" and they began to feel, for the first time, "like a long-term inhabitant of the present. " Missing Time collects five remarkable essays and a new introduction that trace the return of the 20th century's political and cultural repressed in personal and collective terms. In prose that is simultaneously sharp and soulful, mournful and ecstatic, Brostoff offers lucid considerations of the reemergent millennial left, the enigmas of the X-Files, the complexities of Philip Roth's (anti-)Zionism, and other novelties, atavisms, and atavisms newly reborn as novelties. From the communist ardor of the Bronx circa 1940 to the '90s haze of the San Fernando Valley to a Brooklyn apartment building's tenants' association in the midst of a global pandemic, Missing Time collapses past and present into a revelatory encounter with very recent history. Praise for Missing Time"Few books come close to relaying the sense of ruptured time and lost dreams that have haunted the American Left-queer and feminist, Jewish and critical. This one chronicles with exactitude falling in love and with politics, the oscillations of enchantment and hope. Luckily for us, the dream keeps emerging for a Jewish displacement of the Zionist ideal, the reanimation of communism, and the compelling promise of the Bernie burn for socialism among feminist allies. Even when we have lost hope altogether, there is apparently still a way to canvass popular culture, collect the arcana, read Philip Roth and Vivian Gornick again, tell the story of one's childhood friendships to bring about flashes of improbable hope, pressing upon the traces of the holy to emit their light. Ari M. Brostoff gives us a lucid sense of the arc of hope and despair as it passes through popular culture, electoral politics, and the endless repetitions of family romances gone sour. The radical hope never shakes its despair, but neither does it succumb. The writing moves in and against despair to find the promise of diaspora and the prospect of living well outside the nationalist fix of the homeland and its violences-and to cultivate a queer socialism wrought from the rough-edged fragments of the everyday. " -Judith Butler"Missing Time is distinctive for the fresh, new interpretations of familiar subjects to be found in its pages. This is cultural criticism at its originating best. " -Vivian Gornick "In these wry, funny, and incisive essays on topics ranging from growing up with The X-Files, to feeling disappointed in Philip Roth, to what we might learn from second-generation US communists, Ari M. Brostoff helps us diagnose and historicize our present in a way beautifully true to the legacy of '70s feminist.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781953813046

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Missing Time: Essays, by Ari M. Brostoff
• Publisher: Paper Monument, US
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1953813046
• ISBN 13: 9781953813046
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 197 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Over the past few years, in essays published in n+1, Jewish Currents, and elsewhere, Ari M. Brostoff has grappled with the intellectual upheavals and political contradictions that surfaced during the Trump era. 

After the breaking point of the 2016 election, Brostoff writes, “the world came back into hideous focus” and they began to feel, for the first time, “like a long-term inhabitant of the present.” Missing Time collects five remarkable essays and a new introduction that trace the return of the 20th century’s political and cultural repressed in personal and collective terms. In prose that is simultaneously sharp and soulful, mournful and ecstatic, Brostoff offers lucid considerations of the reemergent millennial left, the enigmas of the X-Files, the complexities of Philip Roth’s (anti-)Zionism, and other novelties, atavisms, and atavisms newly reborn as novelties. 

From the communist ardor of the Bronx circa 1940 to the ’90s haze of the San Fernando Valley to a Brooklyn apartment building’s tenants’ association in the midst of a global pandemic, Missing Time collapses past and present into a revelatory encounter with very recent history.

About the Author

Ari M. Brostoff is the culture editor at Jewish Currents. Their work has appeared in n+1, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New Republic, Post45, and elsewhere.