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NIETZSCHE AND WAGNER

Name: NIETZSCHE AND WAGNER
Author: Joachim Köhler
ISBN: 0-300-07640-1

A LESSON IN SUBJUGATION

by Joachim Köhler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1998

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A speculative, sometimes fanciful interpretation of the relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. In 1869, when he was 25 years old, Nietzsche fell under the spell of Wagner, the most influential anti-Semite of 19th-century Germany. Kîhler, author of another, untranslated book detailing Wagner’s supposed influence on Hitler, tries to show how the young Nietzsche was the willing executor of Wagner’s vicious ideological agenda. Kîhler’s success is at best modest. He’s able to produce some anti-Jewish passages from Nietzsche’s minor early works. However, the author is so eager to press his case against Nietzsche that, in the face of sparse or contradictory evidence, he resorts to deciphering hidden messages. Even when Nietzsche is not talking about the Jews (for instance, when he rants against “the Philistines” of Germany), we learn that he is using a secret code to imply that Jewish people are the actual culprits. Kîhler’s argument has the kind of edgy paranoia associated with conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination or alien kidnappings: Evidence to the contrary always points to a sinister cover-up. Kîhler first portrays Nietzsche as an anti-Semite, but offers no explanation for his change of heart when he appears at the Wagners’ with a close Jewish friend in tow. Finally, though, Kîhler’s strongest interest emerges toward the end of the book. The evidence suggests to him that Nietzsche turned against Wagner because Wagner knew about Nietzsche’s secret life as a homosexual. This kind of radical reinterpretation calls for careful sourcing. And yet, Kîhler doesn—t bother with footnotes: A skimpy “bibliographical note” is made to stand in for the customary critical apparatus. He may be right that the possible anti-Semitism of Nietzsche’s Wagner phase hasn—t really been dealt with—maybe, even, that Nietzsche was a homosexual—but Kîhler’s own exploration of these questions is itself insufficient. (14 illustrations)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-300-07640-1

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.