SOURCE: “Damage Control: Adorno, Los Angeles, and the Dislocation of Culture,” in the Yale Journal of Criticism, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring, 1997, pp. 85-113.

In the following essay, Israel examines Minima Moralia for insights into Adorno's character and personality and the impact his exile in the United States had on his critical thought.

1. Flying T.w.a …

To begin with an ending of sorts: at the conclusion to his 1967 Foreword to the English edition of Prisms, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno suggests, rather formally, that

[f]inally, the author could wish for nothing better than that the English version of Prisms might express something of the gratitude that he cherishes for England and for the United States—the countries which enabled him to survive the era of persecution and to which he has ever since felt himself deeply bound.¹

“Gratitude,” “cherish,” and “deeply bound” are scarcely words that one would generally expect...