Ryan Ruby’s time in Berlin is fragmented, neither circular nor linear. Like millions of exiles, immigrants, or expats, he juggles work and private relations, family ties and memories across the various time zones and cities that form his social past. Yet there is a sense of time to which he can hardly relate: Nostalgia. Drawing on Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia and Edward Said’s Notes on Exile, Ryan reflects on his trajectory from the place of «extreme presentism» where he grew up—Los Angeles—to the city «in the throes of restorative nostalgia» where he now lives—Berlin. As a Californian, he cannot shake his status as imperial citizen. But he can strengthen and celebrate the unexpected ties of solidarity developed over time by the various groups of foreigners in this city, from the most privileged to the most marginalized.

Ryan Ruby is a writer, translator, and critic. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Bookforum, New Left Review and elsewhere. He lives in Berlin.

Unabridged version of Ryan’s essay from Berlin Review No 3, Mai 2024, read by the author.
Length 33:46 minutes

Content

• 00:00  Introduction
• 00:50  Nostalgia Is not an Emotion I Tend to Feel
• 04:53  Dropping Out to the Moon or the Underworld
• 08:00  Growing Up Hyperreal
• 12:35  The Pathos of Conservatism
• 16:14  The Virtual Capital
• 18:32  Expat or Exile Revisited
• 24:19  You Can’t Leave Home Again
• 26:23  The Ambassadors
• 29:28  Parasites and Hosts

Published in Berlin Review No 3. Please consider subscribing under blnreview.de/en/abo.

«Berlin Review Audio» is supported by the Berlin Senate Departement of Culture.