Germs (2021) by Richard Wolheim

New York Review of Books cover art for Germs by Richard Wolheim

Book Review

Germs (2021)

by Richard Wolheim

    Squarely within the genre of rich lonely boy memoirs, Germs, by Richard Wolheim is a late comer to the genre.  Wolheim was a reknowned 20th century philosopher, known for his so-called "paradox of democracy" (a voter wants his or her candidate to win but also wants the candidate with the most votes to win even if it is not their candidate.)  Wolheim is also credited with coining the term "minimalism," in his essay, Minimal Art. He was finishing up Germs, the memoir of his precious childhood, when he died in 2001.  Germs was published in 2004.

 

   I didn't have any plan or reason for reading Germs other than the publisher being New York Review of Books.   I highlighted this passage, which really gives you the vibe for the whole book:

One morning, over two decades ago, in the course of what were to prove for me ten very consequential days teaching in Boulder, Colorado, I had the distinct feeling that I was about to start work on this memoir in earnest. The desire to write it had been with me for a year or so, ever since I had reluctantly abandoned another project, which was a novel about life in the servants’ hall of a large Irish country house, upon which the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, the wife of Franz Josef, descends with her own retinue, including courtiers, grooms, ladies’ maids, and her favourite “pilot” in the hunting field. The novel would tell of the carnival that followed, servants aping their masters, mistresses corrupting their maids, and the seed for it had been sown in a bookshop where I had leafed through a popular biography of the Empress, which contained in a paragraph or so a description of her visit to Ireland.

   If you liked the texture of that paragraph, you will love the rest.