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AMBIVALENCE, A LOVE STORY

Name: AMBIVALENCE, A LOVE STORY
Author: John Donatich
ISBN: 0-312-32653-X

PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE

by John Donatich ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2005

A father in the making who’s Spock-like as he hews to the intuitive, though the intuition is informed by Neruda and Emerson,...

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Impending fatherhood takes publishing executive Donatich into an exploratory thicket of thoughts, concerns, and ideas.

In fluid and easy-reading prose, even though the author wears his erudition on his sleeve with apt quotes from a panoply of writers, Donatich, in a purely subjective and self-interrogative way, expresses his thoughts on becoming a father. “The predicaments of manhood” become immediately clear when Donatich gets fired from his job just eight hours after his wife gives birth (he’s now the director of Yale University Press; she’s the literary agent Betsy Lerner). Donatich gathers that “fatherhood calls for indulgence and dependence as well as discipline and providing” and that “the new father must learn to position himself next to his child’s day-to-day life, instead of its iconic markers.” This awareness sends him back in thought to the world of his immigrant family and to his own youth of peculiarities and cultishness: “imperial, competitive, proud, territorial, politically incorrect. . . very much like a religion. The very qualities that embarrassed me as a kid now seem a privilege.” Nothing here is mawkish, though, and Donatich is as hard on his upbringing as he is on his presumptions to the demands of fatherhood: “more complex than uncertainty, less adventurous than dissidence, ambivalence is a mode of being contrary that has neither the credulity of rebellion nor the alibi of cynicism.” After the miscarriages and the breakdowns, he writes convincingly of striving to be the brick, the stabilizer, the heater in the basement whose cycles provide warmth. Acceptance is bittersweet, “a deliberate tolerance for the dull ache of long-term loving.” But once he gets the first whiff of his daughter, all else but her becomes a moot point.

A father in the making who’s Spock-like as he hews to the intuitive, though the intuition is informed by Neruda and Emerson, Kirkegaard and Walter Benjamin, the tragicomic ironists of old Eastern Europe—and the sheer pleasure of Marvin Gaye.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-312-32653-X

Page Count: 240

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

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

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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

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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

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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.