French avant-garde novelist Le ClÇzio (The Giants, 1975, etc.) offers up a meditation and lamentation on Mesoamerican civilizations and the Spanish conquest. Le ClÇzio starts by summarizing two key documents on the fall of the Aztecs: The True Story of the Conquest of Mexico, by conquistador Bernal Diaz, and History of Ancient Mexico, by Catholic missionary Bernardino de Sahagun. Diaz's text reveals a clash of ``dreams,'' the Spanish dream of gold vs. the Mayan dream of bearded men in armor sent by Quetzalcoatl. The History, composed after Cortes and his tiny band had crushed the vast Mexican empire, presents the shared dream of its Christian author and the surviving Indians whom he interviewed: that this lost civilization be recovered or at least memorialized. Other dreams follow, such as those of the shamanistic ``barbarian'' (i.e., non-Aztec) Indian nations, who fiercely resisted the influx of Christianity. Four hundred years later, tormented French poet Antonin Artaud arrived in Mexico, chasing his own dream of a world reborn. Le ClÇzio superbly presents the Aztec worldview with its ``dancing, bloody sacrifices, hallucinations, dreams.'' In a statement typically hyperbolic, he counts the destruction of this world of ``mystical cruelty'' by ``modern weapons and rational thought'' as ``the greatest disaster in human history.'' The author concludes by suggesting that the Aztec world, if it had survived, might have ``integrated dream and ecstasy into daily life.'' Heated, hypnotic, bizarre: Mesoamerican history as if composed by an Aztec priest. (One halftone, one map)
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-8021-1543-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
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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