Reviews for Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933-1945

The average rating for Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933-1945 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-07-16 00:00:00 Steven Heanly This is basically a scholarly book, a compilation of similarly structured essays about fools. As so often happens, I meant to browse, and ended up at least skimming all of the entries. I'm still not sure all of the subjects strictly qualify as "fools", but I can now see the link between the classic fools and jesters of history and the comedy of the present. It's not an association I would have made on my own, and though I don't consider all the comedians discussed here to be direct descendants of The Fool, I learned things about each of them and the history of comedy in general that I didn't know. Though there were of course real court jesters and fools, the basic vehicle for foolishness has always been the theater. And it has traveled widely, from Greece to Carnival, from Zanni to Shakespeare, from the Sots to the Circus, from Punch and Judy to George Burns and Gracie Allen, from Will Sommers to Forrest Gump. Half of the 60+ essays were excellent; particular standouts for me were the ones on Native American Coyote and Laurel and Hardy. Others of note included a diverse range of subjects: Beckett's Post Modern Clowns, Drag Queens, Schlemiels and Schlimazels, Loki, Puck, Mae West, Taishu Engeki. The effect is also cumulative: the sum of knowledge in this book is definitely greater than its interconnected and often overlapping parts.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-11 00:00:00 Augier Raphael Reading most of this small book is like bumping into a friend one afternoon and them saying, "hey, if you're not busy, you should come and meet my uncle" and then you find yourself in a large drawing room in an English country manor house where dear Uncle Ceddy, already into his second glass of port, tries to teach you how to make drinks while proving himself to have an encyclopedic knowledge of quotes from Dickens' novels, while also interrupting himself with personal anecdotes from the War or that time he went to South Africa or that time he went boating on the Thames, all with absolutely no context because he assumes you know everyone he does, and before you know it you're both absolutely sozzled and it's 3 AM and who knows where your friend disappeared to and Uncle Ceddy is your new best friend and yes, it makes perfect sense that drinking a bottle of champagne before flying and drinking 1/4 bottle every hour on the hour thereafter is the PERFECT cure for jet-lag. That is to say that I had assumed the "Dickens" in the title was Charles, but realize that maybe it should have been Cedric. This is neither a recipe book, a memoir, a book of quotations, or a historical investigation of Dickens' relationship to alcohol. Perhaps one needs to have a few glasses of something to appreciate it. I did enjoy reading about the contents of Dickens' Gads Hill cellars, though. Holy cow did he ever have a LOT of alcohol. I bet he (and Cedric for that matter) threw great parties.