An engaging insider’s look at the history and value of Renaissance festivals.
In this nonfiction book, a figure in America’s Renaissance festival movement celebrates the history of the popular fairs.
More than just serving as venues for giving “paying customers the illusion of stepping back in time to a sixteenth century village immersed in celebration,” for more than a half-century, Renaissance festivals have offered “real-life adventure” and “the opportunity to invent yourself.” Despite being the occasional butt of jokes, the once-maligned festivals have only grown in popularity in the 21st century, with yearly attendance in the millions. This history, from the movement’s origins in the California Pleasure Faires of the early 1960s to contemporary festivals that are found across all regions of the United States, forms the basis of Olson’s account. While much of his welcoming text is celebratory, the volume also draws on the theoretical work of C. Wright Mills and other social scientists (who are cited in the book’s rich body of footnotes). These experts provide insights into the social and psychological value of the ubiquitous “fantasy playgrounds,” from comic conventions to theme parks that transport visitors to the worlds of Star Wars and Harry Potter. But the work’s strength lies in its profiles of “rennies,” the insider term for those who organize and work at festivals. A rennie himself, the author toured the country for more than two decades as a member of Smee and Bogg, the Singing Executioners, and offers readers an intimate, behind-the-scenes perspective of “camping out in forests, mountains and seaside” with his “extended family of artists, performers, and beautiful souls.” The book’s inviting prose is accompanied by a treasure trove of full-color photographs from various sources of jugglers, swordsmen, duchesses, and other rennies that adorn nearly every page. A charming concluding chapter on festival ephemera gives readers a visual menagerie of Renaissance fair art, posters, newspaper clippings, tickets, brochures, and T-shirts. While some readers may object to Olson’s occasionally corny writing style (which is effectively evocative of the movement’s festive mise en scène), this is a delightful and visually impressive book.
An engaging insider’s look at the history and value of Renaissance festivals.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-78254-219-1
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.
The comic and television personality turns serious—semi-serious, anyway—in a combination memoir and self-help book.
Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: “Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is.” The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled cross-country trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: “I don’t know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does.” Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the latter has been of tremendous use, if “exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination.” As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners (“I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite”). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, “You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more”—and have grown and flourished.
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593596579
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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