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
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