Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School

I have been interested in the Frankfurt School for a long time. Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse are thinkers not just important to the left, but to anyone interested in the history of twentieth century thought. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism) has long been the best overview of the scholarship produced by these remarkable intellectuals. Jeffries has written an essential new overview of the Frankfurt School. First off the writing is excellent, and I don't believe the sophistication of the ideas is dumbed down at all through Jeffries' accessible and entertaining presentation. (However, I would have to defer to people smarter than me on that score). What I can definitely say is that if you have any interest the Frankfurt School thinkers I can't imagine you won't find this book incredibly stimulating and enlightening. Jeffries' presentation brought a great deal of clarity to issues that previously confused me, such as Adorno's conception of the "negative dialectic." This book has already helped me to better understand references to Frankfurt School debates in other books and articles. It is a first class synthesis of the work of some very provocative thinkers.

This is a superb book on a complex subject. The title comes from Lukacs, who suggested that the members of the Frankfurt School—Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Marcuse, et al. lived in a lovely hotel from whose windows they contemplated what, for them, was an abyss. The group consisted of social scientists who attempted to draw inspiration from Marx and find an alternative to capitalism. They did so during parlous times. The experiences of the ‘proletariat’ under Soviet communism and National Socialism were anything but encouraging. As we recovered from the second world war the successes of capitalism neutralized any desire for revolution; at the same time, the emoluments of capitalism helped to conceal the manner in which it could bring subtler forms of alienation. The book is organized historically and formally ends with the complex departures from Frankfurt School orthodoxy represented by the thought of Habermas. In a kind of coda the author ends with a very clever look at Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, in particular the scene in which Chip Lambert liquidates his library, selling off his collection of Frankfurt School books and more recent books of capital-T Theory. Chip needs some money to impress his new girlfriend and he has departed from the groves of academe to seek a career in screenwriting. Jeffries uses this passage as a springboard to an incisive discussion of Critical Theory in the 21st century. The reader should be wary of some of the book’s jacket blurbs and other reviews. They speak of the book as “an exhilarating page-turner,” and as “funny.” Jeffries has a great sense of the ironic and a full appreciation of the contradictions inherent in the Frankfurt School ‘project’, but this is not a leg-slapping beach book. This is serious and significant (but not ponderous or obscurantist) intellectual history. Similarly, his subtitle, “The Lives of the Frankfurt School” is spot-on but potentially misleading. It does indeed trace the various incarnations of the School and the writings of its members and it does provide trenchant anecdotes about the members’ personal lives, but this is not a Kitty Kelly exposé and it does not focus on the members’ lives to the exclusion of their work. I would say that it offers the perfect balance; every book on philosophy needs to balance out the personal experiences of a thinker with that individual’s thought. It is important to know that Hume was a genial and decent fellow who gave up professional opportunities in order to be faithful to his beliefs, just as it is important to know that Kant (like Jane Austen, e.g.) never travelled to a significant degree and whose favorite music (despite the Critique of Judgment’s vast influence on aesthetic theory) consisted of Prussian marches. The best feature of this book is the author’s balanced viewpoint. It is often said that great biography requires personal sympathy on the part of the author (though Robert Caro stands as a rather prominent exception), but that sympathy must be balanced with objectivity. Jeffries sees all of the foibles of the Frankfurt School, commenting on Benjamin in the following way: “If the Frankfurt School was the last hurrah of German romanticism, then Benjamin was its emblem, revealing the group in all its contradictions—Marxists without party, socialists dependent on capitalist money, beneficiaries of a society they sniffily disdained and without which they would have had nothing to write about” (p. 167). At the same time he concludes with a discussion of contemporary capitalism, saying that in “such a customized culture, one that abolishes serendipity, makes a mockery of dignity and turns human liberation into a terrifying prospect, the best writings of the Frankfurt School still have much to teach us—not least about the impossibility and the necessity of thinking differently” (p. 392). While Jeffries focuses on large, global corporations, I think of a phenomenon closer to home. As I write this, reports are circulating about the University of Virginia’s desire to cut their library’s shelf space by 40-70%. If one seeks an example of an assault on serendipity, one need look no farther than what the contemporary university is doing to itself. My only reservation concerning the book is the fact that it has no illustrations, except for a wonderful picture of Adorno on the book’s spine, extending his wrist and offering a ‘thumb’s down’. Highly recommended.

This is a baggy monster of a book about (more or less) the Frankfurt School. I spent about a third of the book appreciating connections and anecdotes about the protagonists (highlighting like mad), a third of the book squirming at ham-handed readings of this and that, and a third of the book wondering how in the hell Jeffries landed on any of innumerable tangential topics. But, threaded through the hot takes on the Frankfurt School (and lots of other stuff too), Jeffries has a compelling narrative arc to relate, spanning much of the last hundred years, and he invariably brings his acid tongue and acute moral sensibility to the narrative. It is his acidity (e.g. taking the book title from a scathing critic of the Frankfurt School) and his grounded moral ethos that really make this book at the end of the day, and why I’d recommend it, quirks and digressions and all.

Humaniza a estos grandes filósofos con sus incoherencias vitales, y los cambios que fueron teniendo a lo largo de sus vidas. Interesante análisis de la relación con sus padres. Buena descripción de la situación pre nazismo en Alemania. Pensamientos muy vigentes hoy sobre la sociedad capitalista y de consumo. Muy bien escrito. No es de lectura difícil, aunque a veces los debates ideológicos son difíciles de seguir.

A very readable amalgamation of the lives and works of members of the Frankfurt School, this book is an excellent introduction for those unfamiliar with the work of the School in detail. Its interpretation of who belongs and who does not, might be an example of matters of dispute among scholars, but the benefits for the general reader far outweigh any concerns that specialists might raise. It is an admirable wok of integration which offers the occasional unexpected insight as well.

Ein wirklich großartiges Buch, manchmal nicht einfach zu lesen und manchmal als Arbeit empfunden, aber die Arbeit lohnt sich, denn ich wurde reich belohnt. Auf das Thema – die Frankfurter Schule -will ich nicht groß eingehen, denn das kann sich jeder aus dem Buchbeschreibung und der Buchvorschau selbst rauslesen. Ich möchte eher auf die Entdeckungen, Erfahrungen und Überraschungen eingehen, die beim Lesen empfunden habe. Zum Beispiel habe ich ein tiefes Verständnis über die 68er-Linke gewonnen, denn die Wurzeln von Lukács, Marcuse und Adorno werden auf vielfältige Art und Weise beleuchtet aber auch die zugehörigen Theorien dargestellt. Mit wenig Mühe konnte ich Parallelen zur heutigen Zeit erkennen und ableiten. In dem Buch kann man vieles entdecken; eine Überraschung zum Beispiel für mich war die Entdeckung von Walter Benjamin. Von ihm wusste ich bisher nicht viel. Die Darstellung seiner Person und seiner Ideen war inspirierend, sodass ich mir u.a. das Passagenwerk besorgt habe. Eine weitere Überraschung war das das Alabama Lied ( Show me the way tot he next whiskey bar) von den Doors, welches ich bestimmt etliche Male schon gehört habe, ursprünglich von Brecht stammt. Ich könnte noch weitere Erkenntnisse aufzählen - aber das muss jeder für sich selbst entdecken. So hat das Buch meinen Horizont an etlichen Stellen erweitert. Und wer sich für die Frankfurter Schule, die Historie der Linken oder Philosophie im Allgemeinen interessiert, dem kann ich dieses gut recherchierte, anregende Buch sehr empfehlen.

Este libro es una biografía que repasa los grandes conceptos filosóficos de la Escuela de Frankfurt. Un ejercicio ágil y audaz. Escalofriante leerlo 100 años después de la vida de sus protagonistas y entender la pertinencia de sus ideas en este mundo que regresa una y otra vez al fascismo.

Really enjoyed reading this over the summer. Jefferies has a really humorous style but he doesn't shy away from engaging with the theories and it is much much more accessible than much of the source material he is working from. For anyone who is sort of on the fence or perhaps, like me, not overly aware of much of Frankfurt school's work over the decades, I assure you by the end of the book you will have something to take away and at least a deeper appreciation of what these scholars were trying to do - whether or not you think they succeeded.