"The Torch in My Ear" is the second volume of [Canetti's] autobiography; the first was "The Tongue Set Free: Remembrance of a European Childhood."… The most arresting passages in both books deal with his mother and the long battle between them. But neither book is as important as "Auto-Da-Fé" or "Crowds and Power." As the very titles indicate, Canetti is more at ease writing cultural history than offering us personal revelation.

"The Tongue Set Free" was about his literary ambitions and his efforts to avoid the business career that his wealthy relatives all over Europe designated for him after the sudden death of his father as a young man. "The Torch in My Ear" refers to the overwhelming influence on the young Canetti of the powerful satirist Karl Kraus, who not only wrote every word in his own magazine, Die Fackel (The Torch), but gave public readings that...