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“For those inclined to dismiss Adorno’s take on America as the uncomprehending condescension of a mandarin elitist, David Jenemann’s splendid new book will come as a rude awakening. Exploiting a wealth of new sources, he persuasively shows the depth of Adorno’s engagement with the culture industry and the complexity of his reaction to it.” —Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History, University of California, BerkeleyThe German philosopher and cultural critic Theodor W. Adorno was one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century, and between 1938 and 1953 he lived in exile in the United States. In the first in-depth account of this period of Adorno’s life, David Jenemann examines Adorno’s confrontation with the burgeoning American “culture industry” and casts new light on Adorno’s writings about the mass media. Contrary to the widely held belief—even among his defenders—that Adorno was disconnected from America and disdained its culture, Jenemann reveals that Adorno was an active and engaged participant in cultural and intellectual life during these years.From the time he first arrived in New York in 1938 to work for the Princeton Radio Research Project, exploring the impact of radio on American society and the maturing marketing strategies of the national radio networks, Adorno was dedicated to understanding the technological and social influence of popular art in the United States. Adorno carried these interests with him to Hollywood, where he and Max Horkheimer attempted to make a film for their Studies in Prejudice Project and where he befriended Thomas Mann and helped him craft his famous novel Doctor Faustus. Shuttling between insightful readings of Adorno’s theories and a rich body of archival materials—including unpublished writings and FBI files—Jenemann paints a portrait of Adorno’s years in New York and Los Angeles and tells the cultural history of an America coming to grips with its rapidly evolving mass culture.Adorno in America eloquently and persuasively argues for a more complicated, more intimate relationship between Adorno and American society than has ever been previously acknowledged. What emerges is not only an image of an intellectual in exile, but ultimately a rediscovery of Adorno as a potent defender of a vital and intelligent democracy. David Jenemann is assistant professor of English at the University of Vermont.
Customer Reviews
On the backcover, Martin Jay has a blurb in which he claims that this book will shock those who see Adorno as an elitist mandarin. Of course, that reputation, which Jay helped establish, comes not so much as a direct result of Adorno's acid criticism of the so-called culture industry but as a misappropriation/misunderstanding of that criticism.This book delves into a wealth of material--FBI briefs, unfinished manuscripts, radio network publicity brochures, unrealized film scripts--to present a new Adorno; perhaps, an Adorno that was originally intended but ultimately unreleased. This new Adorno--the director's cut, as it were--is much more informed about the interworkings of the culture industry (he and Horkheimer tried to get a film made!) and therefore his criticisms are much more founded and nuanced.In the first two chapters, Jenemann examines Adorno's radio investigations, much of which was unpublished. But Jenemann does something very important: he puts this unpublished work within its proper context by reading them along with NBC publicity brochures. By contextualizing and historicizing Adorno's ideas, we are given a fuller picture not only of where his critique of radio was coming from, but also his critique of the culture industry and his aesthetic theory as well.Perhaps, the strangest chapter is on Adorno and Horkheimer's attempt to get a film script turned into a feature. Who among us knew of this! But Jenemann does not stop at the level of a gossip column. Unfortunately, much of the Frankfurt School research today is concerned with their biographical idiosynchracies--as if they are curios from the Cold War era. Rather, Jenemann is able to dialectically synthesize these findings into an entire theory.The work rounds out with a return engagement with Adorno's relationship with Thomas Mann, and in particular his presence/absence in Doctor Faustus. This is of course as tired a subject as Adorno's opinions on jazz. But somehow, Jenemann is able to avoid the more pedantic version of this story, and instead renders a theory of the novel itself.Perhaps the ossified image of Adorno as mandarin reference by Jay is not a product of Adorno himself but of the staleness of scholarship on Adorno. In taht case "Adorno in America," is much needed tonic and bound to be a new resource not only for those new to Adorno but also his long time readers. This is truly a new work which adds much to the image of Adorno. I would put it right up there with Jameson's Late Marxism and Jay's Adorno.
