Reviewed Elsewhere
- Reviewed Elsewhere
Contributing reviewers Nell Altizer, Patricia Angley, Alana Bell, Judith Lütge Coullie, Michael Fassiotto, Lars Fischer, Marie-Christine Garneau, Theo Garneau, Noel Kent, John S. I. Lee, Gabriel Merle, Barbara Bennett Peterson, Forrest R. Pitts, and Yvonne Ward supplied the excerpts for this issue.
Publications reviewed include The Age (Melbourne), American Scientist, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Arbitrium, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Central European History, French Studies, Heine Jahrbuch, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Jewish Studies, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Modern Austrian Literature, Le Monde des Livres, music & letters, Musical Times, Die Musikforschung, Musiktheorie: Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books (NYRB), New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), Le Nouvel Observateur, Pacific Historical Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, Science, Studi Francesi, Theologische Zeitschrift, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), (Toronto) Globe and Mail, Vierteljahrrchrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Washington Post National Weekly Edition (WP), Weimarer Beiträge, wirkendes wort, Women's Review of Books, Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie, Zeitschrift für Germanistik, and Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte; and from South Africa, the African Book Publishing Record, Artsmart, English in Africa, Beeld, Die Burger, Cape Times, Daily Dispatch, Fair Lady, Financial Mail, The Herald: TGIF, Jozi Weekly, Litnet, Mail and Guardian, NELM News, New Contree, Oprah Magazine, Pink Tongue, Postamble, Protea Boekwinkel Stennbosch Newsletter, Research in African Literatures, SA Bookworm, Saturday Dispatch, Saturday Star, Sowetan, Sunday Independent, The Times, Tonight, and Wordstock.
Jean Améry Werke. Band 8. Ausgewählte Briefe 1945-1978. Ed. Gerhard Scheit. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2007. 804 pp. Euro34.
The eighth volume of the collected works of the writer Jean Améry (1912-1978), who is best known for his reflections on torture and life, death, and survival in the death camps, Beyond Guilt and Atonement, assembles some 350 letters, most of them previously unpublished. This remarkable volume begins with letters written immediately after Améry's liberation from Bergen Belsen and thus offers a rare encounter with the young Améry grappling to establish himself in Brussels as a survivor for whom reality will never again be the same as it is for his contemporaries. The bulk of the correspondence [End Page 190] consists of letters to his long-standing friend, Ernst Mayer. Mayer emerges as Améry's only genuine link to their common pre-Nazi past in Vienna. These letters are replete with Austrian dialect and Yiddish expressions (used only in this correspondence). Following the success of Beyond Guilt and Atonement, letters to various West German intellectuals, journalists, and broadcasters become increasingly important. Another prominent theme is Améry's emphatic critique of the New Left's stance vis-à-vis Israel. Gerhard Scheit has annotated the letters meticulously and added extremely helpful short biographies of the various correspondents.
Ulrike Schneider. Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 60.3 (2008): 278-80.
The Alcoholic. Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel. New York: Vertigo, 2008. 136 pp. $22.99.
"Ames's unsparingly self-exposing work—drinking, sexual misadventures etc. —is also a funny, revolting, touching account of a man's descent into self-inflicted hell and his efforts to climb out again. Dean Haspiel's illustrations capture the mood perfectly."
Martin Levin. Globe and Mail, Oct. 4, 2008: D11.
Amis and Son: Two Literary Generations. Neil Powell. London: Pan Macmillan, 2008. 448 pp. £20.
This is "a volume which is not really a comprehensive 'critical biography' of both . . . and yet is much more . . . a mainly well-judged, helpful and readable survey of two writers whose reputations have waited too long for this kind of blunt appraisal." It is "also about parenthood in the modern British intelligentsia and the huge cultural shift between the 1940s and 60s."
Alan Brownjohn. TLS, July 25, 2008: 5.
Anna Amalia. Herzogin von Weimar. Annette Seemann. Frankfurt/Main, Leipzig: Insel, 2007. 195 pp. Euro22.80.
As the dowager duchess (and erstwhile regent) of the Weimar...
