George Prochnik & Paul Holdengräber

Karl Kraus, the poet and satirist, wrote at the beginning of the 20th centuryabout how loud everything gets. Kraus referred to literal and metaphorical shouting. What are we to do today, when everything has become even more cacophonous, with the urge to block everything out? What do we even want to hear at this point in time? And shouldn’t we be acting instead of listening? Author George Prochnik addresses these questions in his acclaimed books The Pursuit of Silence and Stranger in a Strange Land. In conversation with Paul Holdengräber, he explores the limits and enduring possibilities of listening at a time when the unhappiness and noise of the world threaten to overwhelm our senses.

George Prochnik lives and works as a journalist and writer in New York and London. He has taught English and American literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is the author of books on silence, Stefan Zweig and Gershom Sholem. His books have been recommended as Editor’s Choice by the New York Times.

The hosts of our “Ways of Listening” festival are the legendary interviewer Paul Holdengräber and Hannah Arendt expert Samantha Rose Hill.

The intellectual Paul Holdengräber was the founding director of Onassis Los Angeles. Previously, he led a formative cultural series at the New York Public Library, where he held talks with renowned personalities such as Patti Smith and Werner Herzog.

Samantha Rose Hill is the author of Hannah Arendt (2021) and Hannah Arendt’s Poems (2023). She teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the University of the Underground. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon and LitHub, among others.

Language: English

As part of the “Ways of Listening ” festival

A series of events in cooperation with Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V.