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THE SPOOKY ART

Name: THE SPOOKY ART
Author: Norman Mailer
ISBN: 0-394-53648-7

SOME THOUGHTS ON WRITING

by Norman Mailer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2003

Mailer’s richest thoughts on writing since the shock of Advertisements for Myself.

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More than 50 years after he first staked his claim to the title of Great American Novelist, Mailer surveys the literary landscape—and the competition.

Pasting together “pieces I have written and extracts from interviews I have given,” Mailer hands out a few trophies (and some jabs) to surviving contemporaries Bellow, Updike, and Roth, as well as giants such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe. He also considers the other Tom Wolfe, bops Young Turk Jonathan Franzen, and even skips about the ring with Toni Morrison. Fans following Mailer’s career since The Naked and the Dead (1948) will find many familiar pages, especially those chronicling the young contender’s liverish agonies with The Deer Park (1955), and yet the whole impresses mightily—more so than might A Treasury of Great Literary Comments by Updike, Bellow, or Roth. The mind-altering moment here for younger writers comes when Mailer finds his own voice at last in Advertisements for Myself (1959), the most infectious piece of prose to liberate American authors in the past half-century. At that point, he shifts from seeking the perfect word or nuance to the longer rhythms of double-bed sentences built for the Maileresque hurly-burly of sex, philosophy, and metaphor. He is particularly stimulating on questions of craft: style, first person versus third person, real life versus plot life, instinct and influence, stamina. He praises E.L. Doctorow’s sublime chapter in Ragtime showing J. P. Morgan trying to suck Henry Ford into an occult group of world-rulers. “The fact that it obviously never took place,” Mailer observes, “made it more delicious.” In a longer passage he takes apart Bellow’s Herzog, finding the protagonist an unendurably boring, leaden-footed, “unoriginal man.” Nonetheless, he concludes, “the novel succeeds. There is its mystery. One reads it with compassion. With rare compassion.” Indeed he does, and compassion was a quality rarely associated with the young Norman Mailer. Pub date coincides with his 80th birthday: Can it be that he’s grown up?

Mailer’s richest thoughts on writing since the shock of Advertisements for Myself.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2003

ISBN: 0-394-53648-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER
by Norman Mailer edited by J. Michael Lennon

- BOOK REVIEW
MIND OF AN OUTLAW
by Norman Mailer ; edited by Phillip Sipiora

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST
by Norman Mailer

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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.