by Frank Lentricchia ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1994
Once called ``the Dirty Harry of contemporary literary theory,'' Lentricchia (Duke) proves something of a postmodern wimp in this annoying, enervating memoir of his life as a critic (successful) and family man (failure). Clearly, the current sort of criticism practiced in the academy is no preparation for writing to a wider audience, as Lentricchia attempts here. And he makes the transition as bumpy as possible—indulging in stream-of-conscious blather, confusing fragmentary bits, and callow political invective. At his worst (or maybe his best), Lentricchia sounds like a Don DeLillo character, full of abstract musings on the age, but he doesn't seem to grasp DeLillo's ironies. In fact, Lentricchia takes himself very seriously. Part of his memoir records his stays in a South Carolina monastery, where he reaffirms his belief (in art, not God) and broods on his shortcomings as a husband and father. Proud of his Italian-American heritage, Lentricchia sees his life as a balance of the aesthetic and ascetic impulses. His career as a critic derives from his early love of language but, at the same time, he grooves on ``mafia talk'' and the extremism he finds crucial to his ``ethnic'' life. There's lots of highly personal literary criticism here—the sections on T.S. Eliot are fine, though Lentricchia's slangy stuff on Kafka seems like more posing in a book full of such antics. A few trips to Ireland occasion thoughts on Yeats and Joyce but also callow asides on the ``Troubles.'' The most expendable parts here are the running commentaries on the book's composition, and by the time Lentricchia declares his ``desire not to have a self to reflect upon,'' you wish he would follow his instinct. Instead, he retreats into his many ``selves,'' a tactic in keeping with his trendy theoretical notions. For all its goofy self-absorption, Lentricchia's guilt-ridden lament stumbles onto some topics worthy of further discussion. Next time, think clarity and focus.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43072-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
Share your opinion of this book
More by Frank Lentricchia
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
Awards & Accolades
Likes
21
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
More by Ta-Nehisi Coates
BOOK REVIEW
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.