Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival - Paperback

by Christopher Benfey (Author)

"Beautiful, haunted, evocative and so open to where memory takes you. I kept thinking that this is the book that I have waited for: where objects, and poetry intertwine. Just wonderful and completely sui generis." (Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes)

An unforgettable voyage across the reaches of America and the depths of memory, this generational memoir of one incredible family reveals America's unique craft tradition. In Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay, renowned critic Christopher Benfey shares stories--of his mother's upbringing in rural North Carolina among centuries-old folk potteries; of his father's escape from Nazi Europe; of his great-aunt and -uncle Josef and Anni Albers, famed Bauhaus artists exiled at Black Mountain College--unearthing an ancestry, and an aesthetic, that is quintessentially American. With the grace of a novelist and the eye of a historian, Benfey threads these stories together into a radiant and mesmerizing harmony.

Author Biography

Christopher Benfey is the Mellon professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and the author of the award-winning book A Summer of Hummingbirds. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.