A thoroughly researched, somewhat scholarly investigation of Austen’s oeuvre for devoted Austen fans with some background in...
Biographer Byrne (Kick: The True Story of JFK’s Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth, 2016, etc.) explores Jane Austen’s passion for the theatre and the influence of comedic plays on her writing.
In this updated edition of her first book, originally published by an academic press as Jane Austen and the Theatre, Byrne focuses on the theatrical world of the late 18th century, providing a broad history of the playwrights and the theaters of that time as well as an overview of the performances that Austen attended. The performances served as a source of inspiration for the private family theatricals of Austen’s youth and closely influenced her early attempts at playwriting and fiction and eventually her novel Mansfield Park. In later chapters, Byrne examines how Austen’s knowledge of theatrical technique and use of dialogue played an essential role in building effective scenes and developing characters in all of her novels. The author’s updates of her previous book, geared toward drawing in nonscholarly readers, include an introduction assessing Austen’s increased popularity over the past two decades and, in the final chapter, “Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood,” assessments of the many film and theatrical adaptations of Austen’s work that have captivated audiences over the past century. These include A.A. Milne’s play Miss Elizabeth Bennet, numerous versions of Pride and Prejudice, and the outrageously subversive updating of Emma as the film Clueless, and Byrne evaluates which have proven most successful on their own terms. This chapter, though perhaps more accessible for contemporary readers of Austen, represents a departure from her more scholarly arguments. Ultimately, she writes, “the key difference between the merely escapist and romantic screen renditions of Jane Austen and those that truly succeed as works of art in their own right is the adaptation’s truth not to the letter of her text…but to the spirit of her comedy. The spirit, that is, which she herself learned from the comedic theatre.”
A thoroughly researched, somewhat scholarly investigation of Austen’s oeuvre for devoted Austen fans with some background in literature.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-267449-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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