A prescription for the insular excesses of contemporary criticism that goes wrong as early as its title, since Dickstein (Gates of Eden, 1989—not reviewed) never explores the metaphor of critics as agents of two opposed powers, professing allegiances they do not feel. Few are likely to dispute Dickstein's familiar charge—that academic criticism has become increasingly remote from the experience, or even the competence, of educated nonspecialists. After examining the widening gulf between the babel of the academy and the narrowed prestige of book reviewers, Dickstein proposes a solution in the form of an alternative history or countertradition of cultural criticism (Matthew Arnold, Van Wyck Brooks, Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Philip Rahv, Alfred Kazin, and the discipline of American Studies), literary journalism (Francis Jeffrey, Edmund Wilson, F. W. Dupee), and belletristic survivors like Malcolm Cowley and—in two of his strongest and most surprising sections—H. L. Mencken and George Orwell. Appreciating and revising this humanistic tradition, Dickstein argues, offers the best hope for ``recaptur[ing] the public space occupied by the independent man or woman of letters not only between the wars but throughout the nineteenth century.'' Dickstein's revival of this tradition is timely and welcome, though his own writing, lacking the nobility of Trilling's voice and the incisiveness of Kazin's, isn't its most effective advertisement, especially in its vague choice of positive terms (``Art belongs to a human world'') and its search for painless consensus—as in a closing dialogue calling for a return to a new historicism that isn't quite New Historicism. A provocative survey of literary journalism, then, that's too ready to overlook the fact that genuine breakthroughs in thought are seldom achieved through compromise.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-19-507399-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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