Description

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Kierkegaard's Repetition, Recollections into the Future is a multigenerational family memoir which employs several unique concepts from Kierkegaard. The author, a 5th-generation descendant of the family's first paternal immigrant to the West Coast, recounts a California pioneer family's past through a unique lens. Kierkegaard's concepts of repetition, as well as his Three Stages on Life's Way, are employed in telling the true story of a young boy who left northern Europe alone at age twelve as a cabin boy to sail around the world, before landing on the California coast in time for the Gold Rush. The memoir's historical background is interwoven with the pre-automobile 19th-century history of Los Angeles and its early all-electric railway network managed by the author's great grandfather after whom he is named. The theory of memoir-writing is explored using philosophical, literary, and psychological themes presented in Kierkegaard's enigmatic book, Repetition.