At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture Book

At Memory's Edge is an ambitious and provocative collection of essays whose topics range from Art Spiegelman's Maus books to, most notably, the Berlin Holocaust memorial. Author James E. Young, an American professor of English and Judaic Studies, was the only foreigner and the only Jew on the German committee that selected the design for the memorial. His behind-the-scenes account of this project's development offers sophisticated answers to some very difficult questions. Young doggedly asks how Berlin can remember a group of people who are no longer at home there, and how Germany can, or should, remember the extermination of Jews that was once committed in that nation's name. The author's answers to such questions may appear excessively doctrinaire to some readers. Early in the book, for example, Young asserts that "memory-work about the Holocaust cannot, must not, be redemptive in any fashion". But his rationale for such sweeping pronouncements is very persuasive. The book is also lavishly illustrated with photographs and architectural drawings that will be of great value to all readers who accept the challenge that Young has assumed "the task of contemplating how to understand a formative historical tragedy of which first-hand memory is rapidly fading". --Michael Joseph GrossRead More