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DURAS

Name: DURAS
Author: Alain Vircondelet
ISBN: 1-56478-065-1

A BIOGRAPHY

by Alain Vircondelet ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1994

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This biography, a welcome complement to Marguerite Duras's prolific literary career, is compromised by Vircondelet's stylistic copying of his subject's oblique technique. Vircondelet's project is made clear from an epigraph quoting Duras: ``I would like to see someone write about me the way I write. Such a book would include everything at once.'' Much of Duras's work is clearly autobiographical, frequently revisiting the events of an exotic and dynamic life. In various writings she has retold the focal events of her life, most famously of growing up in Indochina, where she took a wealthy Chinese lover at the age of 15 (inspiring The Sea Wall and The Lover). During WW II, she joined the Paris Resistance with her husband (who, in the course of their activities, would be sent to Dachau). Later she joined and fell out with the Communist Party. Vircondelet is best at chronicling the first half of Duras's life and at recounting these charged events in light of her later writings. Throughout her singular career, Duras's literary work and political activities coincided with new movements without truly belonging to them—the New Wave in film (Hiroshima Mon Amour), the nouveau roman in literature, and leftist politics from radical activities in the 1950s to the turmoil of May 1968 and the women's movement. A familiar and controversial public figure in France, Duras receives full partisan support from Vircondelet, though he gives equal time to her critics. The biographer addresses Duras's complicated relationships with her mother and brothers, and her perplexing yet intimate relationship with a much younger homosexual man. However, he always follows Duras's versions of her personal life and thus adds little original interpretation of her character. Vircondelet, who has also written biographies of Huysmans and Pascal, knows Duras's work and reads it well. But he's too close to her. His epigonic biography too often reads like pretentious ghostwriting. (37 photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1994

ISBN: 1-56478-065-1

Page Count: 378

Publisher: Dalkey Archive

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.