Writing into the World

by Terrence Des Pres

Essays discuss the author's childhood, the function of literary criticism, poetry and politics, and modern literature and writers

295 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Barbara Carder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like Richard Pollack's 'The Creation of Dr. B: a biography of Bruno Bettelheim' from which I got the reference to Des Pres' 'Writing Into the World' for its seminal essay on Dr. B, both these writers are sourced and use their incredible understanding of history in order to dissect. For Des Pres, that is his essay, 'The Problem of Bruno Bettelheim.' While Pollack came to it from the angle of the Orthogenic School and Bettelheim's conflation of that school for mentally-ill children with residents of concentration camps [reduction to infantile behavior], Des Pres hits the problem straight on with his vast knowledge of the conditions of the concentration camps. Des Pres' position which I agree with is that to live through the camps is to be a survivor and to live at all is to be an affront to the dark death-rage of the German power-and-destroy [only 'some' people count] years. . . . . Des Pres' book is filled with essays including an interesting one on the motorcycle death of the writer John Gardner and a memoir of Des Pres' childhood fishing adventures. Overshadowing for me is Des Pres' own death by suicide at age 47. . . maybe that's why I'm not ready to read his masterpiece, 'The Survivor: Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps' as I believe he was in his own sort of 'death camp life' with alcohol [discerned from his friends' writings after his death]. RIP T.D.P.