Knows that she has accepted the reality of subordination. Marry, she keeps her last name, Steiner, as a token of independence, but she ‘Someone caught the big fish,’ a classmate said.” Even if she wereĪs talented as her husband, which she doubts, Pru knows that she will never beĮvaluated on her own merits as long as they are in the same field.

Graduate student hoping to study his subject, English Renaissance literature.īut once they become an item, Pru realizes that “everyone looked at herĭifferently. When they meet, he is a young professor, and she is a Opening episodes, her relationship with Spence has meant taking second placeįrom the very beginning. Shaped, for good and ill, by their intimate connection with a great man. Of Henkin’s narrative attention, the reader sees how both their lives have been As they emerge from Spence’s shadow into the sunlight Particular, by Pru and his son, Arlo, from his first marriage, who are theīook’s real protagonists. Instead, he is a problem that must be dealt with by other people-in Herzog or Roth’s Kepesh, can’t tell his own story or even be an active presence His train of thought while lecturing a few months later, he’s soiling himselfĪnd wandering out of the apartment. Spence’s rapid decline in painfully authentic detail. Only in his fifties, is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The book’s main action begins in 2005, when Spence, still His wife, Pru, throws a party to celebrate, but Spence dislikes the fuss: “Youĭidn’t have to announce it to everyone,” he grumbles.Ībout aging Jewish intellectuals, but Morningside Heights takes an The only TV allowed in his apartment is a smallīlack-and-white set, which is usually hidden away.

He’s the kind of scholar who is famous enough to get a bigĪdvance for a popular book about Shakespeare, yet highbrow enough to feel Robin, a star professor in the Columbia English department, where he has taught Heights, is a portrait of that milieu, an interrogation of its shortcomingsĪnd a eulogy for its passing, all in one. Today, that worldview can feel a little outmoded and lacking in confidence humanism with a Jewish inflection has been outflanked on both the left and the right by more aggressive cultural styles. This Upper West Side neighborhood, anchored by Columbia University, evokes the high-minded, bourgeois liberalism that flourished among Jewish academics and intellectuals in the 20 th century. In the geography of Jewish New York, Morningside Heights has a definite moral and social identity, no less than the Lower East Side or Crown Heights. Editor’s Note: Shortly before this article appeared in print, the book’s publisher moved the release date to June 2021.

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