More than you ever wanted to know about orange, purple, and green. With this sequel to his similarly styled The Primary Colors (1994), Theroux has, thankfully, almost reached the end of the rainbow. And while there are a few golden nuggets strewn about, there is also a great deal of dross. For the most part, Theroux doesn't so much write as endlessly accumulate—fact after fact after quote after reference; at times it's like a Nexis search from hell. Mentions of every appearance of purple in literature segue into purple foods, then circles back to literature via purple poems, and then it's on to purple costumes in the movies. Charitably, the effect Theroux is striving for might be called musical, but he hits all the wrong notes. His prose, in particular, tends to a garish purple, full of archaisms gleaned from Shakespeare 101: ``Orange is a bold, forritsome color.'' Though he tends to an eerie kind of death-of-the-author absence, he occasionally veers into obtrusiveness, including attacks on his critics, a churlish dig at the person who claimed to have discovered several plagiarisms in the last book, and leaden personal digressions: ``I myself have always loved too intensely, if intensely means inordinately, with the extended sense of having romantic overexpectations—in a purple way, I think.'' But Theroux is no literary greenhorn. There are a number of thoughtful observations and compelling juxtapositions. And his research is humblingly prodigious. What it reveals most of all is how similar the significances of colors can be. All three colors, for example, have sexual connotations, all three can describe dusk, rain, etc. Theroux also shows how fickle metaphorical meaning can be. Green can signify youth and vitality or, conversely, mold and staleness. The Romans even spoke of ``green'' old age. All in all, a colorless and cumbersome compendium.
Pub Date: April 25, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-4458-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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