Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers

Paul Gottfried has spent a lifetime asking politically incorrect questions, untimely questions that have made him more unpopular among some timid “movement” conservatives than among critical theorists, Central European Marxists, and assorted other debating and dining partners. But in Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers, Gottfried puts past political battles aside in order to recount his varied associations and friendships with a host of fascinating figures, including his father, Herbert Marcuse, Paul Piccone, Christopher Lasch, Richard Nixon, and Patrick J. Buchanan. Gottfried’s memoir emphasizes the Forrest Gump–like quality of his often accidental relationships with these celebrities and stimulating personalities, the benefits of which were not social or professional but personal. He insists that his life would be of little general interest were it not for the fortuitous encounters that have raised it out of the ordinary. The result is a unique, enthralling narrative that makes a signal contribution to American intellectual history.