The Good European Arguments, Excursions and Disquisitions on the Theme of Europe

by Bamforth, Iain

• ISBN13: 9781857547658
• ISBN10: 1857547659
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-01
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.

Summary

Thrown into a deep identity crisis by Bismarck's victories against the French in 1870, Alsace's divided loyalties have affected the nature of Europe itself. In this authoritative new discussion, Iain Bamforth reports from fifteen years of travel, taking him from Berlin when the wall fell in 1989 to Strasburg, heart of aboriginal Europe. With his ear attuned to the complexities of culture and politics, Bamforth attempts to discover Europe through extra-diplomatic channels, offering essays on writers and thinkers who have done much to define the small archipelago on the edge of Asia. Included are classics such as Kleist, Kafka, and WG Sebald, as well as more offbeat characters such as Alsatian humorist Tomi Ungerer.

Author Biography

Iain Bamforth was born in 1959 into a Plymouth Brethren family and grew up in Glasgow, where he attended the university. He is a doctor and scientific translator. He now lives and runs his own practice in Strasbourg, and contributes regularly to a number of periodicals including PN Review, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times Book Review. Sons and Pioneers received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1992. In addition to his previous books of poetry with Carcanet, Sons and Pioneers and Open Workings, Verso publish his literary history of medicine The Body in the Library, to be joined in 2005 by a book of essays on medicine and modernity.

Table of Contents

The continuing adventures of Mr. Ross Hall, Esq. (& Madam Zell)	p. 1
A critical consciousness : Heinrich von Kleist	p. 15
Being nice to Nietzsche	p. 24
Shelf-life : varieties of the aphorism	p. 35
Scheherezade in Vienna : Joseph Roth	p. 40
Berlin diary 1989	p. 48
A jolly good show : how the British saw their empire	p. 63
Overwhelmed by Aura	p. 71
Politics and aesthetics : Harry Graf Kessler, Eugene Jolas, Wolfgang Koeppen	p. 77
'You must change your life' : a letter from Kakania	p. 94
Bide with style	p. 102
The future of the walk	p. 107
Cinema verities	p. 118
Candour and hygiene : Louis-Ferdinand Celine	p. 129
Third person to herself : Marguerite Duras	p. 143
Believing in architecture : Berlin since 1870	p. 149
The last culture broth : Bernard Pivot's Bookshow	p. 156
Windfowl and their advantages	p. 164
Kafka and America	p. 171
Paris, France : an afternoon with Mavis Gallant	p. 188
Russia and the end of time	p. 198
Next year in Jerusalem : Britain in Palestine	p. 208
The life and times of Tomi Ungerer	p. 215
A stuttered essay on the French	p. 227
Five postcards from Badenweiler for Zinovy Zinik	p. 233
Iliad of abject Europe : airwar, literature and compassion	p. 246
The good European : Nietzsche's counterculture	p. 265
A lance for hire : four hundred years of Don Quixote	p. 277
All the glory of his father's house	p. 286
The road not taken	p. 294
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