Reception
Although he wrote for both popular and scholarly publications throughout much of his career, in the United States (and in English) he mainly concentrated on philosophical and sociological writings. This attracted some criticism from American scholars who found his style difficult to penetrate. At the time of his death in 1966, Kracauer was somewhat marginal in both American and German intellectual contexts. He had long ago abandoned writing in German, yet his research remained difficult to place within American scientific and academic categories.
In the decades following Kracauer's death, translations of his earlier essays and works, such as "The Mass Ornament," and the publication of his letters in German, revealed a fuller portrait of Kracauer's style and gradually brought greater recognition in the United States. His former colleague from Frankfurt, Leo Lowenthal, expressed pleasant surprise at the newfound fame that seemed to accumulate around Kracauer in his death. Since the 1980s and 1990s a new generation of film theorists and critics, including Gertrud Koch, Miriam Hansen, and Tom Levin have interpreted and introduced his work for a new generation of scholars.
Read more about this topic: Siegfried Kracauer
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)