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WRONG’S WHAT I DO BEST

Name: WRONG’S WHAT I DO BEST
Author: Barbara Ching
ISBN: 0-19-510835-3

HARD COUNTRY MUSIC AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

by Barbara Ching ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2001

In the end, even if it converts one or two of them to the cause of David Allan Coe and Bocephus, Ching’s account is for...

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A scholarly disquisition on an embattled musical genre.

Ching (English/Univ. of Memphis) is a true-blue fan of “hard country music,” which goes by other names—roots, Americana, alt-country, etc.—on the few radio playlists where it is welcome today. The province of influential artists such as Hank Williams, George Jones, Porter Wagoner, Waylon Jennings, Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, and other performers who “often portray themselves as poor souls condemned to endlessly state the obvious,” hard country has been driven from the airwaves by the frothy pop of Garth Brooks and other Perrier-swilling yuppies in boots and Stetsons. To illustrate the “almost existential” differences between hard and pop country, Ching offers a nicely wry deconstruction of Brooks’s 1990 anthem “The Dance” and Jones’s 1980 lament “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the second of which she characterizes, and not unjustly, as a “wallow in male misery” while recognizing its superiority on every score. The more prevalent the Brooksian, hook-laden, lyrically unchallenging brand of country becomes, Ching notes—and she is far from the first writer to do so—the farther hard country drifts from the mainstream, so much so that it now stands as an angry, countercultural critique of prevailing values. The author’s plainspoken appreciation for the merits of the hard-country genre is, unfortunately, surrounded by thickets of postmodern jargon that few other than fellow literary critics will want to enter, as when she observes that “abjection is constantly portrayed by an absurdly unregenerate white man who jokes and suffers while women and conventionally successful men brandish the normative values that underscore abjection.”

In the end, even if it converts one or two of them to the cause of David Allan Coe and Bocephus, Ching’s account is for professors—and not for civilian fans of the hard-drinking, lost-highway sound.

Pub Date: July 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-19-510835-3

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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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.