Anti-Journalist

In turn-of-the-century Vienna, Karl Kraus created a bold new style of media criticism, penning incisive satires that elicited both admiration and outrage. KrausOCOs spectacularly hostile critiques often focused on his fellow Jewish journalists, which brought him a reputation as the quintessential self-hating Jew. "The Anti-Journalist" overturns this view with unprecedented force and sophistication, showing how KrausOCOs criticisms form the center of a radical model of German-Jewish self-fashioning, and how that model developed in concert with KrausOCOs modernist journalistic style.Paul ReitterOCOs study of KrausOCOs writings situates them in the context of fin-de-si cle German-Jewish intellectual society. He argues that rather than stemming from anti-Semitism, KrausOCOs attacks constituted an innovative critique of mainstream German-Jewish strategies for assimilation. Marshalling three of the most daring German-Jewish authorsOCoKafka, Scholem, and BenjaminOCoReitter explains their admiration for KrausOCOs project and demonstrates his influence on their own notions of cultural authenticity.a"The Anti-Journalist" is at once a new interpretation of a fascinating modernist oeuvre and a heady exploration of an important stage in the history of German-Jewish thinking about identity."