Myriad allusions swarm like bees in this busy but ultimately ordinary hive. (b&w illustrations throughout)
Weinstein waxes rhapsodic about Literature and Life—and Death and Depression, too.
Perhaps it’s the author’s other career, as a flashy Brown University lecturer on world literature for The Teaching Company’s audio and video recordings, that creates an identity crisis for his sometimes brilliant, sometimes bloated text. Am I a motivational speech? it asks. A pyrotechnic lecture to animate stupefied sophomores? An esoteric article for my academic peers? A vocabulary lesson for those no longer challenged by the Reader’s Digest quiz? A florid paean to art and literature? An aw-shucks populist bath for the great unwashed in a bottomless pool of allusions? To all of the above: “yes.” Weinstein’s thesis, stated early and often, is that literature deals with the most fundamental issues of humanity. There are no relevant distinctions among heart and mind and muscle. Illness and pain are not metaphors. They are life. His title alludes to the scream of humanity that pervades our “house,” connecting us all. That scream, he argues, is the subject of great art and literature. An unapologetic Freudian, Weinstein alludes to just about every name in Western literature and art, with a special fondness for Proust, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Dickinson, Blake, Sophocles, Burroughs, Hawthorne, and on and on. He writes most eloquently about Edvard Munch, whose paintings prove nearly every argument the author advances. Although Weinstein says he’s aiming at just plain folk (“I have tried to write this book in the language of everyday speaking”), his diction often betrays him, and Mr. and Mrs. America will no doubt have to click on dictionary.com for somatic usurpation, alterity, hermeneutic, entropic, oneiric, and other polysyllabic peanuts in what is frequently not basic Cracker Jack prose. Every now and then, though, he reminds us that he’s just an ordinary guy, writing about Oedipus and Tiresias and Creon as “male honchos” who are “duking it out.”
Myriad allusions swarm like bees in this busy but ultimately ordinary hive. (b&w illustrations throughout)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50624-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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