MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03302pam a2200373 a 4500
001 4332039
005 20221102195401.0
008 030508s2004 nyu 000 0 eng
010 $a 2003047576
020 $a0679418687
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm52268811
035 $a(NNC)4332039
035 $a4332039
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dOrLoB-B
043 $an-us---$ae-au---$ae------
050 00 $aPS3551.B5$bZ465 2004
082 00 $a813/.54$aB$221
100 1 $aAbish, Walter.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80102276
245 10 $aDouble vision /$cWalter Abish.
250 $a1st ed.
260 $aNew York :$bAlfred A. Knopf,$c2004.
300 $a220 pages ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
520 1 $a"Walter Abish confronts and encapsulates the historic upheavals of the mid-twentieth century in this deceptively simple, and quietly wrenching account of two journeys." "The first begins in Vienna, where Abish was born in the 1930s in the Jewish, but not-too-Jewish, household of a prosperous perfumer. Then it ricochets around the world as his parents flee first to France (his mother had to sneak alone across the Italian border), then to war-torn Shanghai under Japanese occupation, just ahead of Mao's army, then to Israel." "Incapable of understanding his family's desperate situation, Abish as a boy creates his own private world, filtering out precarious and terrifying realities." "Abish describes fantastic events in the coolest tones. In precise, haunting detail, he records the perceptions of a child who registers and remembers what he will only later understand. He writes of the day in the park when a stranger suddenly screams "Jews out!" and he and his frail grandmother run for the exit in a panic as the other children and grandmothers stand and watch; the day his father is released by the Gestapo because a man in the room owes him money that he has never tried to collect and says, "Let Abish go - he's okay"; of the time his father speaks to him about inheriting his perfume business, as they stand on the deck of a ship bound for China." "The first journey recounts the flight; the second journey chronicles the return: Abish writes about how, in the 1980s, he went on a tour to Germany to launch the translation of his award-winning novel How German Is It - a book he wrote without ever having set foot there, deliberately, because he wished to elicit the idea of Germanness in what was "a fantasy of Germany." This tour of what to him is an unfamiliar society includes a side trip to Vienna, where he glimpses the life he might have experienced and has the horrifying feeling that he never left."--BOOK JACKET.
600 10 $aAbish, Walter.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80102276
600 10 $aAbish, Walter$xChildhood and youth.
600 10 $aAbish, Walter$xTravel$zEurope, German-speaking.
650 0 $aNovelists, American$y20th century$vBiography.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008108453
650 0 $aJewish refugees$zUnited States$vBiography.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008110587
650 0 $aJewish authors$zUnited States$vBiography.
650 0 $aJewish families$zAustria$zVienna.
651 0 $aVienna (Austria)$vBiography.
852 00 $boff,glx$hPS3551.B5$iZ465 2004