A collection of warmed-over, postmodern theorizing pieces on the centrality and self-consciousness of language in novels past and present. Echoing a view common to contemporary novelists and literary theorists, Brink (Imaginings of Sand, 1996, etc.), himself a distinguished South African writer and academic, views literature not so much as a historical progression, but, to use E.M. Forster’s figuration, a group of writers in the same room, occasionally looking over each others’ shoulders. His not entirely original spin on this is that literature—even a 500-year-book like Don Quixote—has always been deeply concerned with and informed by language. In other words, all novels are at heart postmodern. Brink’s deconstructionist tendencies, however, are somewhat tempered by existentialist, and even heroic, leanings: “Language is an attempt, as doomed as it is indispensable, to . . . correct silence—even if it is known beforehand that silence is incorrigible.” In the 15 books he examines, including Emma, Middlemarch, The Trial, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, Brink takes to his task with all the callow enthusiasm of a clever undergraduate, larding his argument with all the canonical authorities, hounding the text, heaping high his arguments on shallow foundations. But he rarely conveys his love for the work at hand. His analyses often read more like a clinical diagnosis of an unpleasant disease. Perhaps this is an inevitable result of using a book/text/words to argue for the “final meaninglessness of language.” South African academia tends to be years behind the West, and it shows painfully here. Still, one can only wonder why a respected author would spend time and effort on such a stultifying and ultimately absurd effort.
Pub Date: April 6, 1998
ISBN: 0-8137-1330-0
Page Count: 388
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
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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