Foreplay ─ Hannah Arendt, the Two Adornos, and Walter Benjamin

Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno were intellectual giants of the first half of the twentieth century. The drama Foreplay explores their deeply human and psychologically intriguing private lives, focusing on professional and personal jealousies, the mutual dislike of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, the association between Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, and the border between erotica and pornography.

Carl Djerassi was born in Vienna and immigrated to the United States in 1938. He is the author of many literary works that have been translated into sixteen languages, including Four Jews on Parnassus, Cantor’s Dilemma, The Bourbaki Gambit, This Man’s Pill, and the plays An Immaculate Misconception, Sex in an Age of Technological Reproduction: ICSI and Taboos, Ego, Calculus, Phallacy, and Oxygen (coauthored with Roald Hoffmann). He is emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University and recipient of the Serono Prize in Literature and many prestigious honors for his scientific achievements. He lives in San Francisco, London, and Vienna.