Bollingen - by William McGuire (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This lively, intimate, sometimes disrespectful, but always knowledgeable history of the Bollingen Foundation confirms its pervasive influence on American intellectual life. Conceived by Paul and Mary Mellon as a means of publishing in English the collected works of C. G. Jung, the Foundation broadened to encompass scholarship and publication in a remarkable number of fields. Here are wonderful portraits of the central figures, including the Mellons, Jung himself, Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell, D. T. Suzuki, Natacha Rambova, Vladimir Nabokov, Gershom Scholem, Herbert Read, and Kurt and Helen Wolff.

From the Back Cover

Bollingen, a village of a few houses, lies within the canton of Saint Gallen at the shallow upper end of the Lake of Zurich, about twenty-five miles east of Kusnacht, the Zurich suburb where C. G. Jung had his home. Another mile eastward, on the edge of the reedy water, Jung bought a piece of land in 1922 and set to building a house. From a quarry near the village he got the raw stones; and, working with two stonemasons from nearby, he learned to split, dress, and place them himself. In 1923 he finished a tower of two stories. At intervals over twelve years he built an annex, another tower, and a loggia.

Review Quotes

"Because we know so little about the role of foundations in American intellectual life, we welcome . . . William McGuire's delightful chronicle of the Bollingen Foundation. Mr. McGuire . . . writes as a participant, not as an outside historian. But he makes the most of his particular perspective. . . And he tempers his sympathetic attachment with a winning sense of irony, even irreverence."---Thomas Bender, The New York Times Book Review