Exiles 

by Michael J. Arlen

Exiles is a memoir of a father and a son in a different era both from our own and the one in which I grew up. I was impressed with the literary references which, not surprisingly, were due to Michael J. Arlen's father's own profession as a writer of novels and essays. The change in American letters is made clear in the sons life as writer and critic, perhaps best symbolized by an early job at Life magazine. His schooling and other events seem to be apart from his father, not so often his mother, but the presence of the father seemed always there in the background.  While he would later become a writer for The New Yorker, Michael Arlen's son was part of a new generation. Fortunately for us he captured the essence of his father's style and generation in this exceptional memoir.


Exiles by Michael J. Arlen. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. 1970
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