Customer Reviews

Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (Stages)

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This is a slim volume from a French philosopher writing of her childhood as a Jew in France during World War II. She writes from the perspective of an adult who clearly still is ill-at-ease with her history, specifically her choosing of a Christian woman who help hide her over her mother; her violation of Jewish law taught her by her rabbi father. This volume does not speak to common experience, not even French Jewish experience; rather it is the experience of Sarah Kofman as seen in retrospect. What is most evident is the lack of resolution regarding her past - the reader appreciates the difficulty with which she apparently tells her story.

The book would have been much better if it was longer and followed a theme longer than just a couple of pages. The different selections started out very interestingly but since the material never was in any depth it was hard to follow. I will explore other books the author has written and see what they are like.

i placed the order on a tuesday night and the book was here thursday, super fast delivery even though it was just standard AND excellent condition!!

I am aware of many authors who died voluntarily. The hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Nietzsche's birth on October 15, 1994, will have special significance for me as being the date of Sarah Kofman's death. Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, an autobiographical account of her childhood, was written shortly before Sarah Kofman was sixty years old. It is easy for me to be impressed by Sarah Kofman because she was a woman who seemed to be interested in the same kind of gag reflex humor that appeals to me.

Certain social situations demand silence about certain things. When the Republicans were coming to Saint Paul (an attempt to put lipstick on a pig's eye) for their convention, I realized that the police in Saint Paul would not want them to hear me shouting my opinions about tax cuts, war, and a ten trillion dollar national debt which is rolling in money in the wrong direction. I split, left town, and tried to crack myself up from a distance. Now that I'm back, and Sarah Palin has become the ideal joke vehicle for the things that Republicans enjoy mocking (like WHY IS THIS MAN LAUGHING? Nixon running for Vice President with Ike in 1952), it is easier for me to be open about Sarah Kofman being the hot white chick philosophy expert in Freud and Nietzsche for France during my lifetime, because she had the kind of familiarity with ultimate issues that World War II made an impression on Jews in Europe that will never quit.

The gag reflex is the ultimate contrast to the kind of piffle that praise for an old goat with America first policies is standing for as the national debt jumps from ten trillion dollars to twelve trillion dollars in the immediate future. Sarah Kofman could be nasty by telling how Rabbi Bereck Kofman was beaten to death in Aushwitz because, instead of working, he wanted to spend the Sabboth praying for everyone on all sides. Religion is a hell of a context in that kind of world, and old goats don't make it much better.