Adventures in the French Trade

Jeffrey Mehlman is University Professor and Professor of French Literature at Boston University. He is the author of eight books, including Walter Benjamin for Children: An Essay on his Radio Years (1993), Genealogies of the Text (1995), and Emigré New York: French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940–1944 (2000).

"This wondrous memoir draws the reader into a unique career and 'trade' that have been points of reference on the horizon of French letters since the middle 1960s. It is sensuous, engaging, of great sweep, and in its observations both cutting and entertaining. No one of his generation bears the same signature as Jeffrey Mehlman; Adventures in the French Trade tells us why."—Tom Conley, Harvard University "This highly personal, remarkably irritating, and unmistakably brilliant memoir presents an intriguing variety of academic situations interwoven with certain crucial political and cultural affairs in France over the years and their repercussions in the United States. Its unmistakable voice (so very Mehlman) is the source of its fascination."—Mary Ann Caws, Graduate School, City University of New York