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HUCK FINN'S AMERICA

Name: HUCK FINN'S AMERICA
Author: Andrew Levy
ISBN: 978-1439186961

MARK TWAIN AND THE ERA THAT SHAPED HIS MASTERPIECE

by Andrew Levy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 6, 2015

Delving deeply into 19th-century sources, generations of readers’ responses and a wide range of Twain’s writing, Levy...

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Rediscovering Twain’s most widely read novel.

As Levy (English/Butler Univ.; A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary, 2009, etc.) acknowledges, anyone writing about Huckleberry Finn must feel “a healthy dose of humility” in the face of a plethora of literary criticism: His notes and bibliography comprise more than a third of this book. Yet he manages to offer fresh insights about the novel’s two central themes—children and race—by investigating Twain’s life and times and the changing cultural contexts in which the book has been read. In the 1870s and ’80s, Levy asserts, Twain was surprised by the love his children generated in him; children became his subject, and he aimed to bring them vividly to life. He responded, too, “to the pernicious twin narratives of his era—the reversal of political advances for blacks and the reframing of American children as the ‘enemy.’ ” His novel “was a bomb thrown” into a vociferous debate about children’s essential nature (were they savages? criminals? innocents?), how children should be raised and educated, and what they should—and should not—read. From the first, the novel proved controversial: Some critics saw it as a nostalgic paean to boyhood; others, that the defiant, illiterate, unrepentant Huck was an influence “not altogether desirable.” Controversy also arose over Twain’s contradictory messages about race. Although he empathized with blacks, he unabashedly loved minstrelsy and wanted “to revive the complicated subversion” of his youthful awakening to blacks’ vital culture. Twain’s capitalizing on blackness strikes Levy as analogous to today’s marketers who look to “black, Latino, and transitional neighborhoods to uncover new trends in fashion, music, and language.”

Delving deeply into 19th-century sources, generations of readers’ responses and a wide range of Twain’s writing, Levy complicates the possibilities of what the novel meant for its contemporaries and what it might mean for readers today.

Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015

ISBN: 978-1439186961

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- PROFILES
Andrew Levy

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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.