At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture

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At Memory's Edge is an ambitious and provocative collection of essays with topics ranging from Art Spiegelman's Maus books to, most notably, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. Author James E. Young, an American professor of English and Judaic Studies, was the only foreigner and the only Jew on the committee that selected the design for the German memorial. His behind-the-scenes account of this project's development offers sophisticated answers to some very difficult questions. Young doggedly asks how Berlin can remember a group of people who are no longer at home there, and how Germany can--or should--remember the extermination of Jews once committed in that nation's name. The author's answers to such questions may appear excessively dogmatic to some readers. Early in the book, for example, Young asserts that "memory-work about the Holocaust cannot, must not, be redemptive in any fashion." But his rationale for such sweeping pronouncements is very persuasive. The book is also lavishly illustrated with photographs and architectural drawings that will be a great value to readers who accept the challenge that Young has assumed: "the task of contemplating how to understand a formative historical tragedy of which first-hand memory is rapidly fading." --Michael Joseph Gross


From Publishers Weekly
While many critics and commentators point to attempts by the "new Germany" to reconcile itself with its genocidal past, most accounts that make it to these shores come from an outsider's perspective. Young, author of The Texture of Memory and a University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor of English and Judaic studies, was the only foreign and only Jewish member of the commission charged with raising a Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Here, he gives an insider's look at the process that got Daniel Liebeskind's celebrated museum built, and also takes stock of the echoes of the Holocaust he finds in the work of other artists and architects. A chapter on Art Spiegelman's Maus comics, which intersperse autobiography with his parents' Holocaust experiences, finds an ingenious transmission of "the living memory of survivors." Shimon Attie's "hypermediated relationship to the past" translates movingly into his site-specific installations in Europe. Young British artist Rachel Whiteread is interestingly placed among fellow applicants for a German national "memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe." Chapters like "Germany's Holocaust Memorial ProblemAand Mine" (discussing the recent quest for a national monument) are full of wryly sensitive and firm observations. While the book leans more toward academic criticism than general interest nonfiction, those interested in the subject will find Young's treatment accessible and engaging. (June) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Young, the author of The Texture of Memory (1993), here asks the question: How can a generation of contemporary artists, writers, architects, and composers remember an event like the Holocaust, which it never knew firsthand? To this end, Young explores the work of Art Spiegelman's so-called comic book of the Holocaust, Maus: A Survivor's Tale; photographer and toy collector David Levinthal; artist-photographer Shimon Attie; and others. He discusses the controversy over Berlin's Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind. And he tells the story of Germany's national Holocaust memorial to be opened in 2001. Young was the only foreigner and only Jew on the five-member panel charged with choosing the memorial's design. Complementing the insightful text are 47 color and 56 black-and-white photographs. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
How should Germany commemorate the mass murder of Jews once committed in its name? James E. Young-the only foreigner and the only Jew to serve on the German commission to select a design for a national Holocaust memorial-tells the inside story of this enormously controversial project. Young also inquires deeply into the moral and aesthetic questions surrounding artistic representations of the Holocaust produced by young artists who themselves did not experience it.


From the Back Cover
"The brilliance of James Young's theoretical insights is matched by his outstanding knowledge of the vast array of representations of the Shoah and by his artistic and literary sensitivity. At Memory's Edge will become an influential book."—Saul Friedländer "A valuable study."—New York Review of Books "Young's book needs no extra boost, and yet this recent debate over the meaning of German nationalism gives his subject another dimension of topicality, proving again how accurately discussions of art can pinpoint all that's buried just beneath the surface of everyday life."—Robert Leiter, New York Times Book Review "A beautifully written and illustrated book that tells us something profound about the featured artistic projects and their contexts."—Natasha Lehrer, Jewish Quarterly "This book provides for further study of the nature and meanings of memory, and on the way contemporary artists contribute to the broad and growing discussion of what memory is." —Jay Winter, Art Bulletin


About the Author
James E. Young, professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is also the author of The Texture of Memory, published by Yale University Press, which won the National Jewish Book Award.


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The brilliance of James Young's theoretical insights is matched by his outstanding knowledge of the vast array of representations of the Shoah and by his artistic and literary sensitivity. At Memory's Edge will become an influential book.
(— Saul Friedländer)  — Saul Friedlander


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