Daniel Mendelsohn’s Memoir-Writing: Rings of Memory

171 Pages·2021·4.148 MB·English

by  Sophie Vallas

Daniel Mendelsohn’s
Memoir-Writing
Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature
Series Editor: Victoria Aarons, Trinity University
Jewish literature is an evolving field drawing upon a rich intersection of contexts: cultural,
historical, religious, linguistic, interpretive, and political. As an essentially interdisciplinary
field of study, Jewish literature transcends geographical and temporal boundaries, taking
us back to ancient texts as it moves into new and evolving directions and patterns. This
series welcomes original scholarship that explores a wide range of diverse perspectives,
approaches, and methodologies that advance our understanding and appreciation of Jewish
literature. The series will cover all geographical areas and all periods and movements in the
field of Jewish literature, including such diverse areas as American Jewish literature; modern
and ancient Hebrew literature; Jewish immigrant writing; Holocaust literary representation;
Jewish writing around the globe; movements and theoretical approaches, such as cultural
studies, psychoanalysis, feminism, gender studies, etc.; and Jewish cinema. We invite schol-
arly contributions that cover a range of genres: memoirs; fiction, including novels, graphic
narratives, and short stories; poetry; and film. We welcome original monographs and edited
volumes as well as English-language translations of manuscripts originally written in other
languages.
Titles in the Series
Daniel Mendelsohn’s Memoir-Writing: Rings of Memory, edited by Sophie Vallas
The Holocaust across Borders: Trauma, Atrocity, and Representation in Literature and
Culture, edited by Hilene S. Flanzbaum
The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust, by Jacky Comforty with
Martha Aladjem Bloomfield
May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych, by Rachmil Bryks
Translated Memories: Transgenerational Perspectives on the Holocaust, edited by
Ursula Reuter & Bettina Hofmann
Keepers of Memory: The Holocaust and Transgenerational Identity, by Jennifer Rich
The Animal in the Synagogue: Franz Kafka’s Jewishness, by Dan Miron
I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, by Gisella Perl
The Midrashic Impulse and the Contemporary Literary Response to Trauma, by
Monica Osborne
Daniel Mendelsohn’s
Memoir-Writing
Rings of Memory
Edited by Sophie Vallas
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Published by Lexington Books
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Copyright © 2022 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Excerpt(s) from THE ELUSIVE EMBRACE: DESIRE AND THE RIDDLE OF
IDENTITY by Daniel Mendelsohn, copyright © 1999 by Daniel Mendelsohn. Used by
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a
division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
THE ELUSIVE EMBRACE by Daniel Mendelsohn. Copyright © 1999, Daniel
Mendelsohn, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited.
THE LOST by Daniel Mendelsohn. Copyright(c) 2006 by Daniel Mendelsohn. Used by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpt(s) from AN ODYSSEY: A FATHER, A SON, AND AN EPIC by Daniel
Mendelsohn, copyright © 2017 by Daniel Mendelsohn. Used by permission of Alfred
A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin
Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © 2018 Daniel Mendelsohn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vallas, Sophie, editor.
Title: Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir-writing : rings of memory / edited by Sophie Vallas.
Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2021] | Series: Lexington studies in Jewish
literature | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021043453 (print) | LCCN 2021043454 (ebook) | ISBN
9781793626769 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793626776 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam, 1960—Criticism and interpretation. |
Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam, 1960—Interviews. | Criticism—United States. | Classical
literature—Appreciation—United States. | Autobiographical memory.
Classification: LCC PS78 .D36 2021 (print) | LCC PS78 (ebook) | DDC 818/.603—
dc23/eng/20211004
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043453
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043454
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Sophie Vallas
Prelude: “Daniel Mendelsohn: An Interview in Arles” 9
Interviewed by Sophie Vallas and Laurence Benarroche
Photographs by Andres Escobedo
1 The Elusive Embrace: A Gay Man’s Bi-passing the
Fantasy of Oneness 33
Nicolas Pierre Boileau
2 Translation, Heteroglossia, and Othering in Daniel
Mendelsohn’s The Lost 49
Yves-Charles Grandjeat
3 Rescued from Oblivion—The Search for One of Six in
Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: Bronia as a Tragic Character 63
Laurence Benarroche
4 An Odyssey: The Lost Redux 81
Marc Amfreville
5 “A Great Story.” On Odysseus’s Scar and Daniel
Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey 95
Jean Viviès
v
vi Contents
6 Conversion in Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey:
Reworking the American Memoir 109
Sara Watson
7 A Father in the Classroom: Patrimony as
An Odyssey’s Arkhê Kakôn 121
Arnaud Schmitt
8 Rosebed: The Stuff Beds Are Made of in Daniel
Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey 137
Sophie Vallas
Index 155
About the Contributors 159
Acknowledgments
My warmest thanks go to Daniel Mendelsohn who spent two days with the re-
searchers of the LERMA (Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherche sur le Monde
Anglophone) at Aix Marseille Université (France) in 2019 and gave us a
wonderful interview while exploring the ancient Roman ruins in Arles. And
thank you to Andres Escobedo whose dark eye captured our deambulation
so beautifully. Finally, I am deeply grateful to the LERMA whose financial
support made the publication of this book possible.
vii

Sophie Vallas
Introduction
Introduction
Sophie Vallas
Aix Marseille Université
“In the nineteen-seventies, when I was a teenager and had fantasies of grow-
ing up to be a writer, I didn’t dream of being a novelist or a poet. I wanted to
be a critic,” Daniel Mendelsohn wrote in his 2012 “Critic’s Manifesto.”1 And
he became one. After being a freelance reviewer for QW, NYQ, The Nation,
or The Village Voice, Daniel Mendelsohn started contributing to The New
Yorker and The New York Review of Books. In 2019, he was named Editor-
at-Large of the New York Review of Books, a magazine which he recently re-
ferred to as “my home.”2 Three collections of pieces (How Beautiful It Is and
How Easily It Can Be Broken, in 2008; Waiting for the Barbarians. Essays
from the Classics to Pop Culture, in 2012; and Ecstasy and Terror. From the
Greeks to Games of Thrones, in 2019) have been published over the years,
gathering texts on classical or modern literature, reviews of films, television
series, theatrical or opera productions, essays on various aspects of US cul-
ture, as well as autobiographical pieces. All of those essays demonstrate how
seriously Mendelsohn once embarked on the career that made him dream as
a teenager, when he ravenously devoured each copy of The New Yorker in his
parents’ Long Island home and learned, passionately learned from those crit-
ics whose “long and searching essays,” whose “erudite and penetrating dis-
cussions” as well as “sustained, cantankerous, and searching critique” set an
example and taught him how to “think critically.”3 The erudition, the passion,
the intellectual rigor, and the commitment to their task which his favorite crit-
ics displayed educated his mind as well as his taste then, and allowed him to
understand that art and culture help to live one’s life: because at their high-
est, poetry, drama, fiction and nonfiction, music, architecture weave together
“beauty and tragedy,” they allow us to suddenly glimpse the fleetingness of
our existence, the fragility of the traces we leave, the ever-looming threat of
loss which we fight with our touching endeavors to retrieve and to remember.
1