bookshelf

HAPPINESS

Name: HAPPINESS
Author: Editors of n+1
ISBN: 978-0-86547-822-0

TEN YEARS OF N+1

by Editors of n+1 ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 2014

Sometimes-angry, always intelligent, deeply earnest, n+1, protesting against the glib, the slick and the trendy, is...

bookshelf

The editors of the feisty literary journal celebrate their 10th anniversary with a collection.

“Happiness” is one “Intellectual Situation” that the editors identify, along with the death of literary theory, the relationship of hype to aesthetics, and the impact of Gchats on such apparently anachronistic behaviors as talking and listening. The trivialization of happiness, though, does not function as a unifying theme for essays that consider an assortment of contemporary issues, including climate change, parenthood, pornography and, not surprisingly, money. Mark Greif, one of the magazine’s founders, proposes a formula to end inequality that’s even more radical than Thomas Picketty’s: Cap everyone’s income at $100,000, add a tax bracket of 100 percent “to cut off individual income at a fixed ceiling,” and bestow on every citizen $10,000 per year “in recognition of being an adult in the United States.” Greif believes money should never be an incentive to work; it “would be the greatest single triumph of human emancipation” if bankers and star athletes abandoned jobs they were doing for the money, freeing them to “be high school teachers, social workers, general practitioners, stay-at-home parents, or criminals and layabouts.” Keith Gessen laments the difficulty of earning a living as a writer, forcing most into day jobs. He wound up teaching creative writing, which he first considered a sham but then came to enjoy: “I even began to feel, in a way I’d never felt as a student, that the old saw about how you can’t teach writing was possibly untrue.” Several essays focus on literature: Diana Abbott reflects on writing about J.M. Coetzee; Elif Batuman recalls a particularly surreal conference on Isaac Babel; Marco Roth laments the transformation of “the novel of consciousness or the psychological or confessional novel” into the neurological novel, in which the self is reduced to neurochemistry.

Sometimes-angry, always intelligent, deeply earnest, n+1, protesting against the glib, the slick and the trendy, is well-represented by this articulate collection.

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-86547-822-0

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: July 7, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

bookshelf

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

bookshelf

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.