Next book

STROLLS WITH PUSHKIN

Fabulously amusing mock-academic flight of fantastic literary criticism about Russia's beloved national poet, Aleksandr Pushkin, written in 1966-67 by Tertz/Andrei Sinyavsky (Goodnight!, 1989; Little Jinx, 1992, etc.) while serving the first of seven years in a Soviet labor camp. When this finally saw light in Russia in 1989, Russian critics were outraged. Pushkin (1799-1837) was not only a Russian Negro but also the first ``civilian'' to make a name for himself in Russian literature, and Tertz (Sinyavsky's pen name when having fun) takes Pushkin down ten more pegs or so, calling him ``not a diplomat, not a secretary, a nobody. A goldbricker. A deadbeat...'' His Pushkin is a trickster of letters who made his name by avoiding all literary pretenses, writing lines of any length he pleased, and carrying on like an all-male puff or lazy dandy who had special insight into what the ladies needed—and gave it to them in verse, as well as in life. Later, he grew tired of his own spectacle and secretly yearned to be more common. Says Tertz: ``Since youth he had regarded his black otherness in society, inherited from his grandfather Ibrahim, with great enthusiasm, rightly viewing his wild pranks as a sign of the elemental force raging within him...[H]is Negro blood took him back to the primordial sources of art, to nature and myth.'' Tertz is especially keen on Pushkin's eroticism: ``When you read Pushkin, you get the feeling that he has some bond with women, that he is at home with women...It must be that flirts are somehow akin to women's aery composition, because of which they unconsciously want everything both within and around them to fly and flutter (isn't that...the origin of the skirt and other muslin and gauzy zephyrs of the feminine toilette?)...Women involuntarily sniff out in the flirt a brother in spirit.'' Read Tertz before the long essay by co-translator Nepomnyashchy.

Pub Date: Feb. 16, 1994

ISBN: 0-300-05279-0

Page Count: 177

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993

Categories:
Next book

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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

Categories:
Next book

NUTCRACKER

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:
Close Quickview