Cleaning out the Wharton attic, Wegener (Literature/Baruch Coll.) has assembled a jumble sale of her nonfiction, with a few notable finds amid the lumber. Wharton's slim, impressionistic study The Writing of Fiction was her only critical work published as a book during her lifetime, but Wegener's selection demonstrates that Wharton wrote nonfiction throughout her career. Her early, fairly conventional journalism consists mainly of book reviews of ephemeral poetry, genteel critical studies, and historical novels, with at best a biography of George Eliot to brighten things. Two essays, however, stand out. ``The Vice of Reading'' castigates the idea that reading is a duty, a humorless and necessary exercise in development, rather than an imaginative skill (``To read is not a virtue; but to read well is an art''). ``The Criticism of Fiction'' won Henry James's admiration for upholding French formalism in the novel over the looser Anglo-American tradition. But even in her chummy review of James's Letters, she mixes a warm portrait of the Master with a keen treatment of his famous style. Wharton's introductions to later editions of her own works give a personal perspective on aesthetics, especially on her intentions in the novel Ethan Frome. Unfortunately, the introductions Wharton wrote for her friends' negligible books, whether historical novels, gardening guides, or travel writing, are slack by comparison. Likewise, Wharton's fond tributes eulogizing eminent but now forgotten New Yorkers are unremarkable. Her most touching eulogy, however, is for Gilded Age Manhattan, in the piece ``A Little Girl's New York.'' Two later critical essays, on the vicissitudes of literary tastes and on the nature of literary realism are relaxed and persuasive. Some of these pieces admirably display Wharton's high cultural standards, incisive critical eye, and conservative literary tastes, but many are works only the most devoted Whartonian would need to read.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-691-04349-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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