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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Reader:  

Bernard Kops

 

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William Shakespeare : The Tempest

'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Foresaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : The Forsaken Merman

'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

Rupert Brooke : Grantchester

'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

Thomas Stearns Eliot : The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

Thomas Stearns Eliot : 'The Waste Land'

'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

[unknown] : [Russian literature]

'After Stalingrad, [Bernard Kops] immersed himself in Russian literature. A GI dating his sister introduced him to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

Walt Whitman : [unknown]

'After Stalingrad, [Bernard Kops] immersed himself in Russian literature. A GI dating his sister introduced him to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

Emily Dickinson : [unknown]

'After Stalingrad, [Bernard Kops] immersed himself in Russian literature. A GI dating his sister introduced him to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

 

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