Germs: A Memoir of Childhood
Feb 2021 · New York Review of Books
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336
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About this ebook
A brilliant, sinuous exploration of family and childhood memory by one of the most original British philosophers of the twentieth century.
Germs is about first things, the seeds from which a life grows, as well as about the illnesses it incurs, the damage it sustains. Written at the end of his life by Richard Wollheim, one of the major philosophers of the late twentieth century, the book is not the usual story of growing up and getting on but a brilliant recovery and evocation of childhood consciousness and unconsciousness, an eerily precise rendering of that primitive, formative world we all come from in which we do not know either the world or ourselves for sure, and things—houses, clothes, meals, parents—loom large around us, as indispensable as they are out of our control. Richard Wollheim’s remarkably original memoir is a disturbing, enthralling, dispassionate but also deeply personal depiction of a child standing, fascinated and fearful, on the threshold of individual life.
Germs is about first things, the seeds from which a life grows, as well as about the illnesses it incurs, the damage it sustains. Written at the end of his life by Richard Wollheim, one of the major philosophers of the late twentieth century, the book is not the usual story of growing up and getting on but a brilliant recovery and evocation of childhood consciousness and unconsciousness, an eerily precise rendering of that primitive, formative world we all come from in which we do not know either the world or ourselves for sure, and things—houses, clothes, meals, parents—loom large around us, as indispensable as they are out of our control. Richard Wollheim’s remarkably original memoir is a disturbing, enthralling, dispassionate but also deeply personal depiction of a child standing, fascinated and fearful, on the threshold of individual life.
About the author
Richard Wollheim (1923–2003) was born in London and educated at Westminster School and Balliol College, Oxford. He fought in France and Germany during World War II and taught philosophy at numerous colleges, including the University of California, Berkeley from 1985 until his death in 2003. He was best known for his philosophical work on art and psychoanalysis, and he served as president of the British Society of Aesthetics from 1992 until his death. He wrote and edited over a dozen books, including On the Emotions, The Mind and Its Depths, On Art and the Mind, and Painting as an Art.
Sheila Heti is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels Ticknor, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be?, and the story collection, The Middle Stories. She lives in Toronto.
Sheila Heti is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels Ticknor, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be?, and the story collection, The Middle Stories. She lives in Toronto.
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