Scraps, Orts, and Fragments: Pieces of a Life

Scraps, Orts, and Fragments: Pieces of a Life is a collection of essays, written in fits over several years, comprising what the title suggests: snapshots of a life without any attempt to fashion them into a coherent narrative. Michael Rosenthal explores subjects as diverse as his teen-age fascination with Hubert’s Flea Circus on New York’s 42nd Street; life with his stoic father; sex in the fifties (for ＂Nice Horace Mann boys＂); a brief and unspectacular performance as a janitor while a graduate student in Wisconsin; step-fathering; assorted aspects of a long career as a college Dean; and Rosenthal’s tenure as a member of the Board of Directors of a wildly successful company on the New York Stock Exchange. And other memorable moments . . . some treated head-on, some with a gentle irony they deserve. In Scraps, Orts, and Fragments, Rosenthal has provided opportunities for people to experience a life through his eyes, and as he states, experiences which are ＂interesting for me to have lived it all, perhaps amusing and interesting for readers.＂

MICHAEL ROSENTHAL was Associate Dean of Columbia College for seventeen years. His rich career includes winning a Guggenheim Fellowship, becoming the first holder of the Roberta and William Campbell Professor of the Humanities, and earning Columbia College’s Alexander Hamilton medal, its highest honor. His books include Virginia Woolf; The Character Factory--Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts and the Imperatives of Empire; Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler; and Barney: Grove Press and Barney Rosset, America’s Maverick Publisher and His Battle Against Censorship. Rosenthal received a B.A from Harvard and his PhD in English from Columbia. He lives on New York’s Upper West Side where, with his wife, Judith, they raised their three sons.