``Ceci n'est pas un livre,'' declares the author of this mercurially playful paradox of confessional literature, authorial awakening, and creative endeavor. The French BÇnabou has, of course, written many books, including Throw Away This Book Before It's Too Late (1992), and is the Definitively Provisional Secretary of surrealist Raymond Queneau's Oulipo (Workshop for Potential Literature), an experimental collective that has included Marcel Duchamp, Italo Calvino, and BÇnabou's friend Georges Perec. The first section of this peculiarly circular work has (following a series of tongue-in- cheek introductions) as its opening sentence the line ``In the beginning, a short sentence.'' This turns out to be, in fact, the book's conclusion. How BÇnabou got to this conclusion is another story, which he obliquely recounts in the rest of ``this (quite real) nonbook.'' It involves an early love for secondhand books and blank notebooks, progresses with uncertainty toward an inchoate life as a writer, and stalls. After such metaliterary hijinks and post-Romantic self-consciousness, BÇnabou restarts himself, focusing on his family history (his ancestors were Sephardic Jews resident in Morocco) and in particular on the occasion when his great-grandfather appeared in a travelogue about Morocco by Pierre Loti (the origin of his family's francophilia). BÇnabou's inheritance is thus split several ways, among an ``exotic'' Arabic background, Jewish heritage, and French acculturation, an identity crisis further complicated by the influence-anxiety he catches from numerous actual books. Before he's finished with his search for the ideal, or potential, book, BÇnabou has juggled with the ideas of Pascal, Borges, Walter Benjamin, and Derrida. A hyperaware and erudite product of Gallic postmodernism, BÇnabou's ludic essay dodges giddily among romantic notions of writing and Parnassian ideals of literature.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8032-1239-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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