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REQUIRED READING

WHY OUR AMERICAN CLASSICS MATTER NOW

Vigorous, engaging essays (many originally published in the New Republic) on the revolutionary impulses of 19th- and 20th- century writers, ``inspired practitioners of the American language,'' offering an explicit repudiation of the more arid contemporary forms of literary criticism. Delbanco (Humanities/Columbia Univ.; The Death of Satan, 1995, etc.) suggests in a brief preface that all the writers under consideration, from Herman Melville to Zora Neale Hurston, have in common the distinctly American idea that ``individual human beings can break free of the structures of thought into which they are born and that, by reimagining the world, they can change it.'' This democratic impulse to make things new seems clear with Thoreau (``to read him,'' Delbanco notes, ``is to feel wrenched away from the customary world and delivered into a place we fear as much as we need''), or Abraham Lincoln (the best example, Delbanco says, of a restorative ``universalizing impulse that cuts across the flimsy barriers by which people try to wall themselves off from those they deem unworthy of inclusion in their circle''), but less obvious in the work of Henry Adams or Stephen Crane. It is to Delbanco's credit that his highly original readings of these authors, as well as of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Theodore Dreiser, Kate Chopin, and Richard Wright, are all fresh and persuasive. Delbanco is also frankly dismayed at the kind of literary criticism that turns texts ``into excretions through which, while holding our noses, we search for traces of the maladies of our culture.'' He argues for a criticism that asserts that great prose, far from being an artifact of capitalist culture, is revolutionary, having the power both to change us and to give us pleasure. The first job of a literary critic, he asserts, is to incite readers to pick up a book. In that, Delbanco is entirely successful. A deeply felt, persuasive, and eminently useful work.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-374-23007-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997

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NUTCRACKER

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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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

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.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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