 | Four Jews on Parnassus -- A Conversation: Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem, Schönberg [With Music CD] Subjects: Benjamin Walter 1892–1940 -- Drama; Adorno Theodor W. 1903–1969 -- Drama; Scholem Gershom Gerhard 1897–1982 -- Drama; Schoenberg Arnold 1874–1951 -- Drama; Philosophy Jewish -- Germany -- Drama; Imaginary conversations; Parnassus Mount (Greece); Djerassi's latest project probably works better in theory than in practice: a "dramatized conversation" among "four extraordinary intellectuals of the twentieth century," philosopher Walter Benjamin, intellectuals Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, and composer Arnold Schönberg. Djerassi decided on this group, he says, because they "belonged to the peculiar subset of German and Austrian bourgeois Jews of the pre-World War II generation... more Berlinish or Viennese than their non-Jewish compatriots" (not incidentally the same subset to which Djerassi assigns himself). In an attempt to provide further insight into the Jewish struggle with identity and the overlooked parts of these men's private lives, he imagines separate conversations among their wives as well (each an "accomplished and energetic" woman). Author, playwright and chemist (who developed the birth control pill) Djerassi (Cantor's Delimma: A Novel, This Man's Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill) will pique readers' curiosity, but will probably only hold the attention of academics who don't mind a surfeit of esoteric references and philosophical flights of fancy. (Dec.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. Carl Djerassi, novelist, playwright, and emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University, is one of the few American scientists to have been awarded both the National Medal of Science (for the first synthesis of an oral contraceptive) and the National Medal of Technology. He has published an autobiography, a memoir, a collection of short stories, a poetry chapbook, five novels, and eight plays that have been staged all over the world. Gabriele Seethaler, an Austrian biochemist who became a photographer and artist, began to fuse art and science in a project entitled Identity Genotype-Phenotype. The Viennese Gallery Heike Curtze has shown her work since 2000. |
