Victor Brombert Books

Set against the backdrop of 1930s Paris, the autobiography captures Victor Brombert's poignant journey from childhood to adulthood. He reflects on his family's escape from France during the Vichy regime, his service in the U.S. Army during World War II, and the personal losses he endured. Using trains as a metaphor for his life's journey, Brombert intertwines humor and tenderness with the darker realities of his experiences. His narrative culminates in his return to America and his literary awakening at Yale, creating a compelling exploration of memory and identity.

"Victor Brombert's title, borrowed from William Wordsworth's ingenious metaphor, "the pensive citadel," refers to the singular world of universities. In essays on the paradoxical nature of laughter, the art of rereading, Shakespeare, Montaigne (his model as essayist), and more, Brombert reflects on a lifetime of learning whose institutional supports have greatly changed since he began his university career in the 1950s. Yet, as Christy Wampole writes in her foreword, for all that has changed, so much of Brombert's long experience as a reader and teacher is richly familiar: "the angst of not doing enough during one's sabbatical, the stage fright before an important lecture, or the recurrent teaching-related nightmares. But also the good things: the joy of learning from one's students, of discovering something new each time you reread a book whose meanings you thought you'd depleted, or of realizing that you've changed the lives of many through your vocation." A veteran of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge who witnessed history's worst nightmares first hand, Brombert nevertheless approaches literature with a lightness of spirit, making the case for intellectual mobility and an openness to change. Indeed, the central section of this deeply pleasurable book, entitled "The Ludic Mode," stresses the playful aspect of all serious commerce with ideas, of all good teaching and good learning"-- Provided by publisher

The memoir chronicles Victor Brombert's coming-of-age as a Jewish youth in 1930s France, where his explorations of love were disrupted by the rise of Nazi power. After escaping to New York, he served in the U.S. Army and fought in pivotal battles in Europe. The narrative weaves together the innocence of childhood, the traumas of war, and a deepening passion for literature. It serves as a poignant meditation on memory, evoking a Proustian reflection on a lost era marked by both melancholy and eroticism.