In 1926: Living on the Edge of Time

by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Travel back to the year 1926 and into the rush of experiences that made people feel they were living on the edge of time. Touch a world where speed seemed the very essence of life. It is a year for which we have no expectations. It was not 1066 or 1588 or 1945, yet it was the year A. A. Milne published Winnie-the-Pooh and Alfred Hitchcock released his first successful film, The Lodger . A set of modern masters was at work--Jorge Luis Borges, Babe Ruth, Leni Riefenstahl, Ernest Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Greta Garbo, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Martin Heidegger--while factory workers, secretaries, engineers, architects, and Argentine cattle-ranchers were performing their daily tasks. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht opens up the space-time continuum by exploring the realities of the day such as bars, boxing, movie palaces, elevators, automobiles, airplanes, hair gel, bullfighting, film stardom, dance crazes, and the surprise reappearance of King Tut after a three-thousand-year absence. From the vantage points of Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York, Gumbrecht ranges widely through the worlds of Spain, Italy, France, and Latin America. The reader is allowed multiple itineraries, following various routes from one topic to another and ultimately becoming immersed in the activities, entertainments, and thought patterns of the citizens of 1926. We learn what it is to be an "ugly American" in Paris by experiencing the first mass influx of American tourists into Europe. We visit assembly lines which turned men into machines. We relive a celebrated boxing match and see how Jack Dempsey was beaten yet walked away with the hearts of the fans. We hear the voice of Adolf Hitler condemning tight pants on young men. Gumbrecht conveys these fragments of history as a living network of new sensibilities, evoking in us the excitement of another era.

Genres: History, Literature, Literary Criticism, Philosophy

448 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1998

About the author

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature and of French & Italian (and by courtesy, he is affiliated with the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures/ILAC, the Department of German Studies, and the Program in Modern Thought & Literature). As a scholar, Gumbrecht focuses on the histories of the national literatures in Romance language (especially French, Spanish, and Brazilian), but also on German literature, while, at the same time, he teaches and writes about the western philosophical tradition (almost exclusively on non-analytic philosophy) with an emphasis on French and German nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts. In addition, Gumbrecht tries to analyze and to understand forms of aesthetic experience 21st-century everyday culture. Over the past forty years, he has published more than two thousand texts, including books, translated into more than twenty languages. In Europe and in South America, Gumbrecht has a presence as a public intellectual; whereas, in the academic world, he has been acknowledged by ten honorary doctorates in seven different countries: Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Russia, and Georgia. He has also held a large number of visiting professorships, at the Collège de France, University of Lisbon, University of Manchester, and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, among others. In the spring of 2017, he was a Martin Buber Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Reviews

[Wagner Nogueira · Rating 4 out of 5]

EM 1926: VIVENDO NO LIMITE DO TEMPO

O autor escolheu um ano do século XX nem mais nem menos importante do que os outros, 1926.

Ele propoe uma leitura não linear, sugere uma viagem pelo o que ele chama de "dispositivos" (exemplos: Bares, Boxe, Greves, Jazz, Múmias, Tourada, etc.) ou "códigos" (exemplos: Autenticidade versus Artificialidade, Centro versus Periferia, etc.) ou ainda "códigos em colapso" (exemplos: Centro = Periferia [Infinitude], Imanência = Transcendencia [Morte], etc.).

Citando jornais, revistas, filmes, livros, peças teatrais entre outros eventos desse ano em questão e tecendo uma teia de correlações entre eles, o autor cria um retrato dinâmico desse ano, que por sua vez serve como ponto de partida para reflexão sobre qualquer ano da história, inclusive o atual.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

The original subtitle of this book was: "an essay on historical simultaneity." Gumbrecht's In 1926 is an original study of interwar cultural history, but also of historiography. Rejecting the historical narrative and sequentiality, Gumbrecht presents the history of 1926 through a series of encyclopedia-like entries, presented in alphabetical order to stress the randomness and lack of chronology.

The entire work is divided into three sections. My favourite is probably the third one, on the collapse of (social) codes. Even though I an personally not a fan of Gumbrecht's historical form and style! I must admit that the penultimate section of the "essay," "Learning After History," afforded some excellent historiographical discussion. Brace yourself for some philosophy of history!