Despite a few gossipy portraits of writers and artists in 1920s Berlin, Elias Canetti's The Torch in My Ear—the second volume in a remarkable autobiography—can hold only marginal interest for readers unfamiliar with the scope of his work. Canetti has published relatively little in 50 years, but as with other models of literary diligence, notably Proust and Joyce, his books are of a piece. Almost every chapter of the autobiography presumes intimacy with the two great books that made Canetti's reputation, the novel Auto-da-Fé and the treatise Crowds and Power. As a third pinnacle, the memoirs sharpen and enrich the vision of the first two, while embodying Canetti's conviction that the "public and the private can no longer be separated." Until about 15 years ago, the private Canetti was a cipher even in Europe. But his recent books, culminating in the still incomplete memoirs (640 pages covering only 26 years...