At the Mind’s Limits
A longtime back, I said that Robert Antelme and Jean Am�ry were the same person. I was wrong. Who knows how I contracted this idea? In mitigation, Jean Am�ry was not the author’s first name and he wrote about the same subject as Antelme: survivorhood. According to this biographical essay, Am�ry was born Hans Maier in Vienna. As a member of the Resistance and a Jew, he was tortured and sent to Auschwitz. Yesterday, I found his book At the Mind’s Limits in my local library, for sale, priced 20p. It consists of five essays about his experiences. Primo Levi is quoted on the cover: “There are pages that one reads with almost physical pain”.
The book is discussed in an essay by WG Sebald in his powerful, posthumous book On the Natural History of Destruction. As this book was such a page-turner, I have no memory of reading it.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- The Secret Life Of Primo Levi There was a mesme…
- Payback
- The Book Now Come
- A Scottish enlightenment
- Off with her head Headline from the BBC: Thatch…
