The best thing to come out of Raymond Sokolov's fussy biography of A.J. Liebling, Wayward Reporter (1980), may be the republication, in one volume, of Francophile Liebling's four books of diverse encounters with the French—French generals being of no less "obsessional interest" to him than French restaurants. Briefly but serviceably introduced by Sokolov, they comprise the two books of wartime New Yorker dispatches—on "fighting, politics, and peasantry"—The Road Back to Paris and Mollie & Other War Pieces; Normandy Revisited (1958), which takes the middle-aged Liebling, in a chauffeured car, back to the scenes of his student days and his wartime engagements; and Between Meals (1962), subtitled "An Appetite for Paris" and a non pareil celebration of oysters and wine, chefs and proprietors—from childhood. The exuberance, the feeling for place and character, the attention to "rudimentary things"—and always the unexpected word, the edged phrase—continue to delight and astonish.
Pub Date: May 1, 1981
ISBN: 0872236439
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Playboy Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1981
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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A New York Times columnist and editorial board member delivers a slim book for aspiring writers, offering saws and sense, wisdom and waggery, biases and biting sarcasm.
Klinkenborg (Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile, 2006), who’s taught for decades, endeavors to keep things simple in his prose, and he urges other writers to do the same. (Note: He despises abuses of the word as, as he continually reminds readers.) In the early sections, the author ignores traditional paragraphing so that the text resembles a long free-verse poem. He urges readers to use short, clear sentences and to make sure each one is healthy before moving on; notes that it’s acceptable to start sentences with and and but; sees benefits in diagramming sentences; stresses that all writing is revision; periodically blasts the formulaic writing that many (most?) students learn in school; argues that knowing where you’re headed before you begin might be good for a vacation, but not for a piece of writing; and believes that writers must trust readers more, and trust themselves. Most of Klinkenborg’s advice is neither radical nor especially profound (“Turn to the poets. / Learn from them”), and the text suffers from a corrosive fallacy: that if his strategies work for him they will work for all. The final fifth of the text includes some passages from writers he admires (McPhee, Oates, Cheever) and some of his students’ awkward sentences, which he treats analytically but sometimes with a surprising sarcasm that veers near meanness. He includes examples of students’ dangling modifiers, malapropisms, errors of pronoun agreement, wordiness and other mistakes.
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-26634-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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