Germs: A Memoir of Childhood

Germs: A Memoir of Childhood

by RichardWollheim (Author)

Synopsis

'This is a book like no other. It is the work of a philosopher who was also an imaginative writer, and whose philosophy was sustained by a devotion to aesthetics and psychoanalysis. Richard Wollheim died in 2003, not long after the completion of the book, which he felt to be his 'best piece of work'. An earlier book, A Family Romance, the portrait of a terrified manhood, shares some of its concerns. Germs, which traces a passage from childhood to youth, is a recovery of the past that is rich in sensation and in exposure to the world. It opens with the anxious somnambulism of a child's exploring steps, pierced by a thorn, the child is placed against the starched apron of a woman's breast. Soon he is the boy who brushes against the 'horse-like' bodies of back-stage ballerinas: further brushes of the kind were to be long deferred. His father is a fastidious impresario, a friend of Diaghilev's and the incarnation of an Old Europe. His mother is a figure commandingly comic in her absurdities: a vexation and a fascination. Wollheim's 'Confessions' tells the story of a wrestle for meaning with an environment wonderfully evoked, of an ordeal in the dark wood of experience which is both moving and funny, and which has the origins of an adult sexuality and of adult encounters with works of art. Hypersensitivity, and idiosyncrasy, are made a pleasure, and a version of the human condition. Once read Germs will not be forgotten.' - Karl Miller

$3.30

Save:$6.87 (68%)

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Black Swan
Published: 04 Jul 2005

ISBN 10: 055277314X
ISBN 13: 9780552773140
Book Overview: Destined to become a classic' - Francis Wyndham

Media Reviews
'A frighteningly good memoir' - Andrew O'Hagan, London Review of Books; 'Wollheim's powers of description astound...Because of the intensity with which a remarkable man has offered us a view of his inner self, I doubt whether anyone who has read it will forget it' - Diana Athill, Literary Review; 'Germs is not only elegantly written; it is a human document of considerable power and importance' - John Armstrong, Independent; 'Pungently truthful, complex and original' - Alan Hollinghurst, Guardian
Author Bio
Richard Wollheim was born in London in 1923 and educated at Westminster School and Balliol College, Oxford. He served in the army during the Second World War, seeing action in France and Germany. From 1949, Wollheim taught philosophy at University College London, becoming, in 1963, Grote Professor of Mind and Logic. He retired from UCL in 1982, and from then until 1985 was Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. Between 1985 and 2003 he was professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1989 until 1986, he was also Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of California, Davis. Wollheim was the author of many acclaimed works of philosophy and a novel, A Family Romance. He died in 2003.