The Double Life of Paul De Man
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.96 (685 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0871403269 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 560 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-09-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
She lives in New York City. . Evelyn Barish is a professor at City University of New York’s Graduate Center and its College of Staten Island, and the author of Emerson:The Roots of Prophecy, for which she won the Christian Gauss Award
Double life, indeed This interesting biography of a 60's cultural hero and self-inventor seems to have caused some hurt feelings. Now, isn't it always better to know the truth?Incidentally, if you check the "other reviews" of all those reviewers who gave this book one star, this seems to be the only book they ever reviewed, in most cases the only item of any kind they ever reviewed. Hmmmm.. "Thought-provoking biography of undeservedly respected academic" according to Welsh Corgi fan. To say that I liked this biography would not be correct. Its primary attribute for me was that it was thought-provoking, causing me to return (if only briefly) to the academic life of my long-gone youth. Some of these thoughts follow. Even if some of the claims made in the biography are dubious, the biography more than did its job of leading me into critical thought about its subject.First, based on points made in the biography, it occurs to me that someone with a background like de Man's would particularly love the idea of deconstructionism, because it enabled him to separate from his ow. "A Credible "Background Check" on a Well-Known Scholar" according to R. Moore. There are several good reviews of this book (some of which address both the content of the story and the author's research methods) in the press (including the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books)--and those interested in this tale of a proven Nazi sympathizer, convicted forgerer, bigamist, liar, and general "operator" and self-promoter, should seek them out. Despite some criticism of some aspects of Barish's historic research and some aspects of her interpretations of some events, none of those reviewers controvert her reporting in its essentials, and none im
Readers will marvel at how successfully de Man hid his misdeeds behind the luminous persona of a brilliant critical theorist, repeatedly using the plausibility of past lies to leverage yet larger new prevarications. From Booklist *Starred Review* When Mary McCarthy recommended the young Paul de Man for a position at Bard College in 1949, she characterized him as intelligent, cultivated, modest, and straightforward. In the indictment Barish proffers, de Man also bent, even flouted, the policies of the prestigious universities where he made his degree. An astonishi
Arriving penniless, he quickly rose again, befriending an entire generation of American writers in New York, including Dwight Macdonald, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Mary McCarthy. Barish sketches de Man's renowned careers at Bard and Yale, as well as the circumstances surrounding his lovingbut bigamoussecond marriage to former Bard student Patricia Kelley, who created the tranquillity he so lacked.Juxtaposing this personal story to his meteoric rise through American academia, Barish traces the origins of the philosophical deconstructionism that he later created with Jacques Derrida, showing how de Man attracted followers with his attack on the hypocrisy of society that attempts to cover up the "essential alienation" of art from "the system." While focusing on the biographical facts, this commanding and psychologically probing biography reveals as much about human behavior and the cross-currents of twentieth-century intellectual thought as it does about the man who held an entire generati