Room for Doubt.

Room for Doubt is about one writer’s growing suspicion that there are more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in her previous philosophy. Through Wendy Lesser’s account of her stay in a city that she never imagined she would see, a book she thought she wanted to write but never did, and a friendship that constantly broke down and endured, she offers us an unusual journey through the terrain of feeling and beliefs, and in the end shows us how, once examined, things are never quite what she thought they were.

Raised as an agnostic who acknowledged her Jewish heritage mainly because it seemed like caving in to Hitler not to do so, Lesser always assumed that she would never visit Germany. Yet once in Berlin, she is astonished to discover a place that is at once spur and antidote to many of her dissatisfactions and longings. Hoping, in Berlin, to write a book about the Scottish philosopher David Hume, she is not sure whether it is the writer or his ideas that she finds sympathetic, and eventually she comes to see that the only way to learn something from Hume is not to think about him as having something to teach. Instead of writing about Hume, she decides to write about her “difficult friendship” with Leonard Michaels. In doing so, she comes to see that their
difficulties––fights and reconciliations, mutual obstinacy, and an intensely shared interest in the arts––were an essential and binding aspect of a friendship which, despite Michaels’ recent death, remains an important part of her life.

A completely honest, at times funny, and always engaging self-portrait unlike any other memoir or autobiography.

Wendy Lesser is the editor of The Threepenny Review and the author of seven previous books. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Remarque Institute, and the American Academy in Berlin. She divides her year between Berkeley and New York.