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| The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany
ISBN: 9781400826018
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Germany -- Description and travel; Travel writing -- History; Germany -- In literature;
Gorra, a Smith College English professor, first visited Germany in 1993, when he was invited to give a lecture. He was taken aback at how much he liked the country, and how interesting he found it. "I was startled to find I was enjoying myself, startled because once you get past the idea of Oktoberfest, the words 'enjoy' and 'Germany' don't, for an American, seem to belong together." This unlikely travelogue explores the nuances of Gorra's social, cultural and even monetary exchanges. The author's accounts illustrate his hypothesis that our American memory of WWII still informs our relationship with contemporary Germany. In one episode, Gorra finds himself at a customs office, struggling with the language and trying to retrieve a damaged parcel from the U.S. "I was given a knife and asked to open it. Books. And on top, the very first volume that both the customs official and I saw, was Hitler's Willing Executioners.... I felt vaguely embarrassed about it, as if the book's appearance at the top of the box had confirmed the German stereotype about the American stereotype of Germans." Gorra is most successful in these moments of surprise and sometimes even shame. Other times, the book feels burdened by references to scores of other writers and philosophers and reads more like an academic text than insightful travel writing. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Michael Gorra is Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English at Smith College. He is the author of After Empire and The English Novel at Mid-Century , and the recipient, for his work as a reviewer, of the Nona Balakian Citation of the National Book Critics Circle. He reviews books for the New York Times Book Review , the Times Literary Supplement , the Atlantic Monthly , and other publications. |
