The Language of the Enemy |
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Author:
| Friebert, Stuart |
ISBN: | 978-1-940605-93-7 |
Publication Date: | Feb 2016 |
Publisher: | Black Mountain Press, The
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $22.50 |
Book Description:
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) Imagine having studied German in highschool for a possible career in science, fallen so in love with the language that it quickly became an obsession (fueled by a native German teacher's indoctrinating ways), excelling in it to win a fellowship to study in Germany in 1949-50, one of the 1st exchange students after the war, and possibly the 1st American Jew to do so, changing career ambitions upon return to start a career teaching the language and the literature, writing 1st books in...
More Description) Imagine having studied German in highschool for a possible career in science, fallen so in love with the language that it quickly became an obsession (fueled by a native German teacher's indoctrinating ways), excelling in it to win a fellowship to study in Germany in 1949-50, one of the 1st exchange students after the war, and possibly the 1st American Jew to do so, changing career ambitions upon return to start a career teaching the language and the literature, writing 1st books in German, only in mid-career to suffer something of a breakdown, "divorcing" the German Dept. where you taught, founding, with help from colleagues and your writer-wife, an undergraduate writing program & co-founding a college press, before finally looking BACK to try to trace, from early childhood on, how things could happen the way the did, which impetus to do so was driven by your grandmother on her deathbed who asked the most tormenting of questions, given the family's history: "Why have you devoted yourself so exhaustingly to the language of the enemy?"