A mixed bag of gags and witticisms revealing the hollowness of both victory and defeat.
In this cartoon collection by the author of The Slings and Arrows of Mundane Fortune (2019), the concepts of winning and losing are unpacked, tongue firmly in cheek.
“Those who are admired—whether for their success, brilliance, beauty, talent, or charm—are winners,” writes Hartz in his introduction. He adds: “They are valued, their faults tolerated, and their kindness exaggerated.…By contrast, the nonwinners—the losers—struggle for appreciation and companionship, and their mistakes are viewed without sympathy.” So begins this collection of single-panel cartoons and aphorisms deconstructing what it means to be a winner—or the opposite—in modern American society. Businessmen, athletes, and Hollywood stars dot the pages, as do the insecure, the poor, the ostracized, and the vaguely disliked. (One caption reads, simply, “Losers know they’re losers but not why.”) Hartz focuses on the ways society motivates us to be winners or to perceive others as such. In one cartoon, two people regard a mansion and a sports car, with one saying to the other, “All my fame and fortune mean nothing unless my brother hates me for it.” In another, two statues of Michelangelo’s David stand side by side, one typically svelte and the other more realistically paunchy. The caption: “Sympathetic. Not Sympathetic.” In addition to cartoons, aphorisms appear throughout the book, some funny and some simply thoughtful. “Beauty and intelligence are considered essence, not ornament,” reads one. The cartoons—drawn by Jovic, Wolfe, and Ramos—are imbued with frolicsome energy. Appropriately, the entries aren’t all winners—some fail to elicit a laugh, and a few are just head-scratchers. The cartoons have a better success rate than the aphorisms, some of which feel bumper sticker–ready (“EQUATION: Status = achievement X marketing”) while others could have used another draft or two. There are plenty of gems here that ask the reader to consider the arbitrary or downright unjust manner in which winners and losers are chosen. The result is a sense of nihilism that is half liberating and half depressing. As one cartoon featuring a mournful picture of a teenage nerd against a black background reads: “And then they came for me, but there was no one to speak for me because why would anyone do that.”
A mixed bag of gags and witticisms revealing the hollowness of both victory and defeat.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79759-770-6
Page Count: 143
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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