Fans will delight in another window into Codrescu's shrewd and quirky mind - his confession of AOL addiction, his thoughts...
Novelist, poet, professor, and NPR commentator Codrescu (Hail Babylon!, 1998, etc.) brings his eclectic interests and unique slant to good, evil, and much, much more in this millennial collection of his latest essays.
Using Armageddon as a launching pad, Codrescu first puts "the ubiquitous devil of our secular culture" under a microscope, and he breaks down humanity's doomsday believers, from "paramilitary paranoids" to "optimistic New Agers." The essays that follow are loosely organized around the theme of evil, and as Codrescu comments on American, immigrant, and emigrant life, he uncovers its darker sides, toughing on the ills of social amnesia, hypocrisy, and government corruption. Romanian-born and now a New Orleans resident, Codrescu takes his readers from the heat of the French Quarter to the icy streets of Transylvania, from Kosovo to Chicago, and to cyberspace and back. His outlook is that of a cautious and comical pessimist, and he argues, "Everybody in the world feels sick and it's only Prozac, work, Bill Gates, and the media that keep us from realizing it." His tone, however, is not portentous or depressing but rather is accented with his distinctive brand of sarcasm and softened by his memories of childhood. Many of the essay topics fall in a gray area between highbrow academia and popular culture. Thus, Elvis, Carl Jung, The Unabomber, Allen Ginsberg, the Pied Piper, and Dante are among the men, sinister and otherwise, making appearances within his text. Yet too often Codrescu exercises a license to drift into murky waters. An essay on autobiography declares, "The memoir is a skeumorph," while in a more postmodern piece he insists, "Virtuality is television squared."
Fans will delight in another window into Codrescu's shrewd and quirky mind - his confession of AOL addiction, his thoughts on being a grandfather, and his strange yet convincing argument "Against Synchronicity." Others, though, may become lost in the many obscurities.Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-20294-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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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