The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir

by Marjorie Perloff

A fascinating memoir of refugee flight and survival, intellectual yet highly personal, by one America's eminent literary critics. The Vienna Paradox is Marjorie Perloff's memoir of growing up in pre-World War II Vienna, her escape to America in 1938 with her upper-middle-class, highly cultured, and largely assimilated Jewish family, and her self-transformation from the German-speaking Gabriele Mintz to the English-speaking Marjorie―who also happened to be the granddaughter of Richard Schüller, the Austrian foreign minister under Chancellor Dollfuss and a special delegate to the League of Nations. Compelling as the story is, this is hardly a conventional memoir. Rather, it interweaves biographical anecdote and family history with speculations on the historical development of early 20th-century Vienna as it was experienced by her parents' generation, and how the loss of their "high" culture affected the lives of these cultivated refugees in a democratic United States that was, and remains, deeply suspicious of perceived "elitism." This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading critics, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal.

Genres: Memoir, History, Nonfiction, Biography

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Patricia Vinyard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I noticed this book in a bookstore and bought it based on its connection to an unexpected and enduring interest. To see my son graduate college in 2017 I visited Vienna and loved it there, and as a result I want to know more about city and its recent history. This looked like a great source.

Dr. Perloff's writing is engaging, and I was very interested in her perspective having emigrated as a child during the Anschluss. Having also read The Lady In Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer, I wanted to pick up the thread discussed in that book of a lost intellectual and artistic milieu that had thrived in Vienna in the early 20th century.

Because it's a memoir of Dr. Perloff's personal experience, and of one side of her family, it is not comprehensive with regard to Viennese culture (and it clearly doesn't intend to be). And yet the window of insight reveals how deep and rich that Viennese culture was. I also got an unexpected insight: reading The Vienna Paradox has made me realize how thin and pale my own educational experience was as a child (by comparison to young Marjorie's (née Gabriele's)) and what is actually possible for children. This window into the richness of Dr. Perloff's intellectual life has strengthened my resolve to continue learning as an adult, while knowing that I can never fully make up for the lost time in my education.

In spite of the devastating losses for the people of Europe during the world wars, for Jews and for others displaced, traumatized, or killed in the holocaust, the project to wipe out the richness and humanity through the raw power of hatred ultimately failed. The love, deep intelligence, and resilience of the human spirit shines through in Dr. Perloff's writing. I feel lucky to have found her.

[TroTro · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was interested in this memoir because of the depiction of interwar Vienna. Regarding the Viennese part of the tale, it was very good, but the later part of the memoir was too literary for my taste. But it is well written.