Guestbook and Stories about Herbert Marcuse

page maintained by Harold Marcuse
(Harold Marcuse Faculty homepage)

part of the Official Herbert Marcuse website,
created Sept. 1, 2005; updated 7/29/11

When I started this site in March 2001, I included a Guestbook from sparklit on the homepage. Over the years it has accumulated hundreds of entries. Since sparklit forces readers to browse backwards page by page, I plan someday to archive those entries here. (view sparklit guestbook)

Additionally, I sometimes receive personal anecdotes via e-mail that I would like to include on the site--as I find time, I am putting them here. Some of these can be found on the Scholars and Activists page.

2001 Entries (back to top)

• .

2002 Entries (back to top)

2003 Entries (back to top)

• July 13, 2003 e-mail from Josie Foulkes:
  Dear Harold,
  I was so happy to hear from you. Are you Peter's son? I don't know what I could write except to recall memories of Herbert and Inge. They were so supportive of me and my family when I was going through a hard time. They lived across the street and used to have me over for cocktails and wonderful arguments with Herbert.
  They were instrumental in guiding me to organize emergency housing for Mexican and African American families in La Jolla, at a time when low-income families were faced with eviction. Many people in this community appreciated Inge and Herbert; they helped so much, although he made me promise never to mention his name.
  When I had trouble reading One-Dimensional Man in English, not my first language, he chided me, but then obtained one for me in Spanish.
  Herbert and I were personal friends and neighbors for 20 years. I cherish that time of my life and the memories . I wish I could have got him to dance to the Mexican music at my parties.
  I no longer have the web site address and would like to have it. Please feel free to delete any of what I have offered, and in addition I have many more memories.

2004 Entries (back to top)

2005 Entries (back to top)

2006 Entries (back to top)

• From a Jan. 2006 e-mail from Lew K. to Irene Marcuse:
  "Thought you'd appreciate this. My sister who graduated from Brandeis about 1958 noticed your name in the cc's of one of my emails and asked if you were related to Herbert Marcuse. I responded that you were his granddaughter and here's her follow-up email:
  'When we were freshmen, we thought he looked exactly like God ought to look (if there was one). We also voted him the professor we'd most like to have an affair with--he was at least 65 at the time--incredibly ancient--I was 16 or 17. That Viennese accent--ooooh A wonderful professor.'
  Your Grandpa was a hottie!!"
• An April 12, 2006 e-mail from historian Rick Perlstein, who is currently working on a book about writing a book about the backlash against the left in the 1960s entitled "Nixonland" (see also Wikipedia Perlstein page):
  ' A story: my Mom's younger brother David was a student at Washington U. in St. Louis in the 1970s. Marcuse came to give a lecture, and for some reason my uncle was recruited to drive him from the airport. He wasn't political. He tried to make small talk. He knew this famous professor was from San Diego. He asked him what he thought about the San Diego Padres' changes. He claims H.M. responded, "Ach. Baseball is a fascist sport."'

2007 Entries (back to top)

• On August 7, 2007 former student Myriam Miedzian [entry on Scholar-Activists page ] wrote in an e-mail to Harold:
  Now for a bit of personal history. My ex-husband Stanley Malinovich taught philosophy at UCSD from 1967 to 1972. I was relegated to San Diego State—very typical at the time. I also taught philosophy.
  We soon became friends with Herbert and Inge. We were both very fond of them. Unlike some Marxists and other left wingers we had known their concern was not just with humanity, but also with people. They were as kind and considerate with the person who cleaned their house as with illustrious colleagues. Herbert had a great sense of humor. I still smile when I think about how he called my older daughter Brunhilde when she was a baby—she was known to scream quite a bit. (Her real name is Nadia and by the way, she got her Ph.D. in Modern European History from Michigan—her area is French Jewish History. She got there in ’91, so you just overlapped one year.)
• On Dec. 17, 2007 Alexander Cockburn wrote the following in his Nation column "The Dialectics of Revolution ... Uh, Recycling" (scan of column ):
  "The night before his address I cooked dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Marcuse on behalf of the New Left Review editorial committee. Marcuse was sharing lodgings with Goodman [anarchist intellectual writer Paul, 1911-1972] and denounced the latter's habit of leaving the bathroom door open as he stood in his underwear, brushing his teeth, 'flirting his buttocks.' Marcuse twitched his behind in parody of the licentious author of Growing Up Absurd as, slightly shocked, our group waited to continue with probing questions about the Frankfurt School. 'Too much civilization, not enough Eros,' Mrs. Marcuse muttered wryly."
• 
  

2008 Entries (back to top)

• From a May 2008 email:
  Dear Harold Marcuse,
  I am currently enrolled in a Marx Philosophy class at San Diego State University, where one of your grandfather's students and someone who holds your grandfather in extremely high regard teaches the class. He just showed our class the Herbert's Hippopotamus film and up until recently I wasn't aware of the importance your grandfather had in the academic and political world. I think you might be proud to know that the only other required text of the class other than the infamous Marx-Engels Reader are selections of your grandfather's publications. I am currently working on a project about Ho Chi Minh and Marxist-Lenin theories and I am wondering if you are aware of any articles, publications or lectures of your grandfather's about Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam. I greatly appreciate the consideration taken by reading this e-mail and any direction that you recommend to me or can guide me down will be very helpful. Thanks again and I hope to hear back soon.
  - S.E. Graduating Senior at San Diego State University (Aug.-Oct. 2008 blog)

2009 Entries (back to top)

2010 Entries (back to top)

• From a March 2010 email from Dr. Alice Lotvin Birney (Cultural Manuscript Historian, Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress):
  I was a student of your grandfather at UCSD in the 1960s. In fact, I was there in the second year of the graduate school in La Jolla. While the buildings were being constructed, we used to sit with him at the open-air tables and discuss philosophy. His lectures later sparked my dissertation/book on Shakespeare and Satire. During those years, he was married to his second wife [Inge]. Erica, who would become his next wife, was just his graduate student and assistant. She and I did a Vietnam protest in the village of La Jolla in front of a Catholic church. Our actions elicited the wrath of the local priest and congratulations from Herbert. Long ago.

   

2011 Entries (back to top)

• Feb. 2011 email from Daniel Cohen, Davis, California:
  Before these disappear into non-memory:
  • (1) Herbert once told me he was getting up around 5am each day to write poetry (?) or to write about poetry and beauty (?) for an hour or two. "These [writings] will help provide for Inge after I'm gone..." This must have been in the 1970-1972 period in La Jolla, when I worked down the street at Salk. What struck me then was that he was making a free space in time (5am to 6:30am or so). Later: almost Shabbat-ish, isn't it? Anyway it was time set aside, not for the concerns of the present day... I wonder if these morning writings ever surfaced? Did they end up with Ricki in San Francisco?
  • (2) I wrote to Lowell some years ago about the following, and it still is a mystery: Herbert had an African-Asian Jamaican graduate student at UCSD, older than Bergman/Netzer/etc, named Keith Lo (1968). When Lo went to visit his father who was dying that Fall or (end of summer), the British -- still maintaining Jamaica as a colony -- pulled his passport and the U.S. pulled his visa. He could not return. I once asked Keith if he felt less isolated by his Chinese ancestry, having a billion or so backers, so to speak. He said "We came from a group that was so small only a few hundred people, that the (Han) Chinese didn't even use our name, they just called us the stranger tribe" ("waigwo", foreigners). I vaguely heard that he had been hired by the Jamaican ministry of education at a fairly high level. I think Herbert, the Feds, and the Brits all thought highly of him. No records left at UCSD that anyone could find (maybe without looking through storage boxes in basements). Any trace in the other Marcuse records?
  • (3) For Harold Marcuse: When I drive up between Davis and the Sutter Buttes to go to rice research plots I do pass a Marcuse road. To a non-ag person this is the middle of nowhere. I tell people Reagan must have named it for Herbert (I think there were non-related Marcuses who farmed/worked there, actually).
  • Best Dan Cohen Maccabee Seed Company Davis CA

2012 Entries (back to top)