Siegfried Kracauer (eBook)

Graeme Gilloch is Reader in Sociology at the University of Lancaster

Our Companion Introduced: An Intellectual Schwejk

Part I From Inner Life: Sociological Expressionism

Chapter 1 Small Mercies: The Spirit of our Times

Chapter 2 Portraits of the Age

Part II From Our Weimar Correspondent: The "Newest
Germany" and Elsewhere

Chapter 3 On the Surface: The Dialectics of Ornament

Chapter 4 Berlin Impromptus

Part III From the Boulevards: Paris of the Second Empire in
Kracauer

Chapter 5 Offenbach in Paris

Chapter 6 Orpheus in Hollywood

Part IV From the New World: Monstrous States, Mental Images

Chapter 7 The Caligari Complex

Chapter 8 Re-Surfacing Work

Part V From the Screen: Redeeming Images, Remembered Things

Chapter 9 Film, Improvisation and "The Flow of
Life"

Chapter 10 Film, Phantasmagoria and the Street

Inconclusive: Penultimate Things

"Our Companion in Misfortune is an evocative and engaging
portrait with much fresh insight into Kracauer's wide-ranging
and imaginative work as theorist and critic of media and
metropolitan experience. Gilloch successfully captures
Kracauer's distinctive voice in its mix of melancholy and
sharp wit. Much more than an introduction, this book gives its due
to Kracauer as a major figure in the orbit of Frankfurt School
Critical Theory."

Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University

"Kracauer may "rest a while in peace", but only for a
while. Gilloch's magisterial study, forces a return to
Kracauer. Music, film, the city and his own literary attempts tie
Kracauer to the modern. The book reveals a thinker who, in
responding to the demands of his own time, writes and thinks in a
way that addresses the contemporary. There is an acuity of thought
that allows Kracauer to engage our modernity. Gilloch's own
power as a writer and a thinker is to stage that engagement. This
is an invaluable book whose presence should be both welcomed and
celebrated."

Andrew Benjamin, Monash University