Brodsky Among Us - (Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy) by Ellendea Proffer Teasley (Paperback)

About the Book

"A searingly personal memoir of the great Russian poet by his American friend and publisher, containing much previously unknown material about how Brodsky left Russia and how he made his way in the new world, and how, during the cold war, Americans played a crucial role in his fate"--

Book Synopsis

A searingly personal memoir of the great Russian poet by his American friend and publisher, containing much previously unknown material about how Brodsky left Russia and how he made his way in the new world, and how, during the cold war, Americans played a crucial role in his fate.

Review Quotes

"[Ellendea Proffer Teasely's] memoir of Joseph Brodsky, with its concise and penetrating character portrayals, and the depiction of the poet's journey from fifteen year-old school dropout to Nobel Prize winning poet, is itself a work of poetry and deserves to be included in both undergraduate and graduate programs of Russian literature." -Marya Zeigler, Department of Defense, Slavic and East European Journal Vol. 62.3

"...Ellendea Proffer Teasley's memoir of the poet, which became a sensation when it was first published in Russian three years ago, provides a penetrating and at times deeply moving account of both the myth and the man behind the work. She renders the Brodsky she knew not just as a great poet and deeply imperfect human being, but also as a political thinker who was uncompromising and unforgiving in his beliefs."

"Brodsky Among Us, by Ellendea Proffer Teasley, the co-founder of the legendary American publishing house Ardis in a translation by the well-known Viktor Golyshev, has already caused a sensation.... [In this memoir] Teasley cuts against the Brodsky cult, the transformation of his poetry and prose into objects of mindless adoration. Her memoir is a call to return the human face to the image of a literary colossus.... Brodsky Among Us allows one to see this celebrity outside of his usual context, and this sharp "shift of vision" is what is truly in order to read Joseph Brodsky's poetry."

"Ellendea Proffer Teasley, in her short new memoir [Brodsky among Us] offers a different view of the poet. It's an iconoclastic and spellbinding portrait, some of it revelatory. Teasley's Brodsky is both darker and brighter than the one we thought we knew, and he is the stronger for it, as a poet and a person...Brodsky Among Us appears to have been written in a single exhalation of memory; it is frank, personal, loving, and addictive: a minor masterpiece of memoir, and an important world-historical record."

"If this book did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. But the problem is that very few people would be able to invent it-that is, to write it this way: without teary-eyed delight or spiteful score-settling, without petty fights with either the dead or the living, and at the same time with a full understanding of the caliber and distinctiveness of its "hero." ... What is this book actually about? It is about a young American-educated, a lover of literature, open to the world-who came to Russia in the late nineteen-sixties. About how she and her husband met a poet whose gift was obvious, sharp, and charming. About how that man then-before their eyes and with their help-took off on a dizzying path. And this, oddly enough, is a rather difficult story to tell."

[Ellendea] Proffer Teasley's memoir is an excellent primary source for information about Brodsky's character and personality, his exile and journey to the United States, his adaptation to this new culture and his attitudes toward it, his relationship with writers and intellectuals in America, and his undiminished opposition to and hostility towards the Soviet Union.

Among the reminiscences of the Soviet Union and Russian literary endeavors at the turn of the twenty-first century, this is the most appealing memoir-with-history. It is a truly wonderful book-intelligent, witty, warm, truthful. ... A wonderful portrait of a moment in history and a generation that acted to improve it. A wonderful book, as I said, and repeat for emphasis.

About the Author

Ellendea Proffer Teasley is the author of Mikhail Bulgakov: Life & Work and co-founder of Russian Literature TriQuarterly and Ardis Publishers. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989.