[Daviscenter-list] Book Launch - Thursday, April 30

You are invited to the book launch of /Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing / Yale University Press By Steven J. Zipperstein Thursday, April 30, 2009, 3:00-5:00pm Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University Byerly Hall, 1^st floor 8 Garden Street, Cambridge Co-sponsored by Harvard Hillel A conversation with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein & Steven J. Zipperstein Wine, cheese reception to follow RSVP: SZipperstein(a)aol.com <mailto:SZipperstein@aol.com> / / /"Steve Zipperstein writes with such clear-eyed empathy, such patience for his subject's foibles, and such a refreshing lack of moralistic judgment that Isaac Rosenfeld comes to seem like a character Chekhov might have invented//---//had the Russian master lived to observe the passionate literary friendships and the dog-eat-dog struggles of mid-20th-century New York intellectual life. /Rosenfeld's Lives/ is a fascinating and cautionary tale about how much character, talent, and luck weigh in the mysterious balance that tips a writer toward fame or failure."/--- Francine Prose// /"Isaac R osenfeld was a major critic and writer of the post World War II period, from Chicago by way of New York and Greenwich Village, whose first novel seemed to promise---as did the early novels of his close friend, Saul Bellow---that great things could be expected to follow. Alas, they did not, and Rosenfeld died young. Steve Zipperstein has reconstructed from what was left behind a fascinating story bringing to life the generation of Jewish writers and critics who emerged from what was still a Yiddish-speaking immigrant world ./Rosenfeld's/ Lives is a remarkable achievement. " /*--- *Nathan Glazer / / */ /* /"This long-awaited biography of Isaac Rosenfeld is far more than a brilliant analysis of the man, his work, and his demons. It is a profound---and profoundly moving---meditation on the fragility of creativity, the caprices of reputation, and the doom of those whose lives are thereby made and unmade." /--- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein