ABSTRACT
Expelled from Austria and a perpetual traveler, I have never succeeded organically to be part of the society in which I happen to be living. English was my second language, acquired through persistent study and practice, and yet a German word or phrase will occasionally come to mind before I can think of its English equivalent. At the end of World War II, when I briefl y returned to Vienna as a member of the American occupation forces, I could not connect with even my closest boyhood friend, who had remained there after 1940. I had returned as a conqueror, and we had nothing to say to each other. On the other hand, neither could I share much with my dorm mates at the Mt. Hermon School for Boys, a boarding school delightfully located in western Massachusetts overlooking the Connecticut River, and my musical education was limited to Mozart and Debussy; I knew nothing of American pop and other teenage icons. Furthermore, at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where I spent the academic year 1943/44 prior to induction into the American army, I found myself persona non grata by the fraternity brothers with whom I lodged because of my supposedly Jewish ancestry. A perpetual outsider, I could never fi nd an organic connection to my adopted country.
