Read Back Then: Two Literary Lives In 1950s New York (2003)

Back Then: Two Literary Lives In 1950s New York (2003) - Plot & Excerpts

Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan, a husband and wife team, both New Yorkers, tell of their literary experiences in "the city". Ironically, the joint memoir ends with their move to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to escape some of the exciting turmoil that entranced them in earlier years. The book is mainly an exercise in name dropping. Since I am not familiar with any of the publishers and many of the authors mentioned, the book was of limited interest to me. Still, it is eloquently written - honest and witty. I wish Anne had included more if her home life. She was the daughter of a well-to-do public relations executive, of German extraction, and nominally Jewish. Justin was from a Eastern-European lineage, more recently arrived on these shores and regarded as inferior by uptown German Jewish brethren. Her family was opposed to the match. That is a part of the story that intrigued me.

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