Siegfried Kracauer

Graeme Gilloch is Reader in Sociology at the University of Lancaster

"Our Companion in Misfortune is an evocative and engaging portrait with much fresh insight into Kracauer’s wide-ranging and imaginative work as theorist and critic of media and metropolitan experience. Gilloch successfully captures Kracauer’s distinctive voice in its mix of melancholy and sharp wit. Much more than an introduction, this book gives its due to Kracauer as a major figure in the orbit of Frankfurt School Critical Theory."Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University "Kracauer may “rest a while in peace”, but only for a while. Gilloch’s magisterial study, forces a return to Kracauer. Music, film, the city and his own literary attempts tie Kracauer to the modern. The book reveals a thinker who, in responding to the demands of his own time, writes and thinks in a way that addresses the contemporary. There is an acuity of thought that allows Kracauer to engage our modernity. Gilloch’s own power as a writer and a thinker is to stage that engagement. This is an invaluable book whose presence should be both welcomed and celebrated."Andrew Benjamin, Monash University

• Our Companion Introduced: An Intellectual SchwejkPart I From Inner Life: Sociological ExpressionismChapter 1 Small Mercies: The Spirit of our TimesChapter 2 Portraits of the AgePart II From Our Weimar Correspondent: The “Newest Germany” and ElsewhereChapter 3 On the Surface: The Dialectics of OrnamentChapter 4 Berlin ImpromptusPart III From the Boulevards: Paris of the Second Empire in KracauerChapter 5 Offenbach in ParisChapter 6 Orpheus in HollywoodPart IV From the New World: Monstrous States, Mental ImagesChapter 7 The Caligari ComplexChapter 8 Re-Surfacing WorkPart V From the Screen: Redeeming Images, Remembered ThingsChapter 9 Film, Improvisation and “The Flow of Life”Chapter 10 Film, Phantasmagoria and the StreetInconclusive: Penultimate Things