CondÇ Nast Traveler contributing editor Iyer submits a disparate collection of meditations that, taken together, offer a fascinating portrait of the turbulent and tentative emergence of a truly global culture. Travel assumes many guises in this compilation, and while Iyer (Cuba and the Night, 1995, etc.) does indeed take us to far-off exotic lands in several essays (including a trip to the empty spaces of Ethiopia, where he discovers a vibrant form of Christendom and churches filled with white-robed priests), he also profiles literary figures, foreign and domestic, whose work transcends—or is emblematic of—a national identity. He also ruminates more broadly on the cross-border influences of popular culture. An essay on the filming of Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha in a village in Nepal points out how some of the more peculiar attributes of ordinary Nepalese life are made even more bizarre under the sway of the film crew. Visiting Bombay, his ancestral homeland, Iyer writes of the zanily complicated and teeming city as a ``pressure point for an archetypal global struggle between a multicultural future and a tribal past.'' Iyer profiles three of the ``masters'' of the evolving literary form that he has dubbed ``tropical classical''—poet Derek Walcott, novelist Michael Ondaatje, and essayist Richard Rodriguez—noting that each is ``trying to put the realities of our multinational present into the established structures of the past; to link the traditions of our textbooks with the changing societies around us.'' An assortment of literary essays, focusing on authors such as R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie, and Kazuo Ishiguro, among others, also sounds this theme: Writers everywhere, he says, ``are using the words they've learned at their masters' feet to turn their masters' literature on its head.'' A pleasing, occasionally sobering, and provocative exploration of the new culture emerging around us and the figures bringing it to life.
Pub Date: April 20, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45432-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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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