Vital and unsparing. Murray taps the wellspring of greatness and posits it as a challenge for artists-in-the-making.
Smooth but scrappy essays on the creation of art, universally and with particular attention paid to the circumstances of the African-American experience.
Octogenarian cultural critic Murray (The Seven League Boots, 1996, etc.) is both a keen participant and observer as he deals out his thoughts on the blues, Robert Penn Warren's Who Speaks for the Negro?, New York in the 1920s, the glory of Duke Ellington, among other topics. A rapier intellect keeps these essays quick and nimble, but they leave plenty to chew on in their wake. Murray is especially fascinated by “the matter of processing or stylizing idiomatic folk and pop particulars, which is to say extending, elaborating, and refining folk and pop material up to the level of fine art.” Duke Ellington is one example; he transformed indigenous American raw material into universal art by seizing the “indispensable dynamics of the vernacular imperative.” In parallel, the author notes that writers such as Faulkner (and one might add Murray himself) conjure a sense of place via idiomatic particulars that can be turned as metaphors. To survive, let alone flourish, Murray argues, one has to think fast, be “ready to swing as if he were a competent jazz musician in the ever unpredictable circumstances of a jam session and also always be ready to riff or improvise on the break.” This seems a crucial statement of reality not just for African-Americans, but by extension for anyone living at the turn of the millennium. Especially insightful is a previously published interview (by Sanford Pinsker) in which Murray talks about hearing the jazz in his favorite writers (Kafka, Mann, Auden): “When a sentence sounds right to me, it's probably some variation of the Kansas City 4/4.”
Vital and unsparing. Murray taps the wellspring of greatness and posits it as a challenge for artists-in-the-making.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-42142-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
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
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
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