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IN PLATO'S CAVE

Name: IN PLATO'S CAVE
Author: Alvin Kernan
ISBN: 0-300-07589-8

by Alvin Kernan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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This gentle, wise, yet tough-minded memoir will delight and inform anyone who—d like to understand the academic world of the last 50 years. While academic autobiographies are often insular and dreary works, occasionally they—re witty as well as serious, self-critical as well as egotistical, and constructed around a theme larger than a single life. Kernan’s (Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket’s World War II Odyssey, 1994, etc.) bid for the genre is of this rarer kind. The book relates his experiences since the 1940s at some of the world’s great universities, particularly Yale and Princeton, as he ascended from student to professor to administrator. His theme is the democratization of American universities, especially private ones, during these years. While Kernan does his best to convey the gains as well as the costs of a continuing process of change, his heart is with the way things used to be, especially at Yale, where his strongest affections seem to lie, and which he saw wracked by fermenting student culture, racial turmoil (notably, Bobby Seale’s trial), and sundry errors of leadership. Kernan describes himself accurately as a conservative, but he’s an unusual variety of the species: courtly, wry, measured, unideological—the kind, that is, who makes you think. And yet one wishes that, in addition to the situations he deftly relates, often with devastating wit, he’d shed his gentle courtesy now and then, and simply let fly—against plagiarism, for instance, which has made inroads into the classroom that he so well describes. Kernan believes that eventually the structural changes in American higher education will end and things will settle down. But as his own tale of the emergence of what he calls the “demoversity” suggests, one cannot be sure. No diatribe at all, this work serves instead as an elegy for education as it once was.

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-300-07589-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999

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.