Using the art of the essay—a form Dr. Johnson called “a loose sally of the mind”—Holland (Endangered Pleasures, 1995) presents miscellaneous reveries of past delights. Though it may help, one is not obliged to be a geezer to be captured by the charm of most of Holland’s ardent recollections. Not long ago, she convinces us, the grass was emerald green, the sky bright azure. Her concerns include funny old customs like greeting passersby from front porches and sending telegrams to transmit big news. Gone are America’s great factories and grand department stores. Do people still gather round pianos to sing? Do windows still open to unregulated ambient air? Are things mended anymore? What happened to liquor cabinets? What happened to poems that scanned and rhymed and were memorized? What happened to us? If all this sounds reactionary, perhaps it is; or perhaps it’s just nostalgia. The essay “Homogeneity” might (unfairly) be read as regressive. Maybe that is simply an inherent danger in a testament to a time not so long ago when, in nicely observed retrospect, things seemed a lot better. Once, all we had to worry about was atomic destruction. Now, along with proper disposal of plastic wrapping and kids’ unsupervised play, we worry about the air that contaminates our toothbrushes. The author remembers “when people who thought germs were nesting in their toothbrushes got slammed into psychotherapy.” The 33 ruminative essays collected here vary in length and topic from the sublime (“Falling in Love” and “Art,” scarcely two pages each) to the mundane (“Radiators,” more than four pages and “Worries,” more than ten pages). Nostalgia, naturally, is tricky. It’s appealing to those who share the recalled pleasures and puzzling to their juniors. This collection, fitting stylistically somewhere between E.B. White and Andy Rooney, should rightfully be taken as a time capsule instructive to younger generations, a source of amazement to those yet unborn. Here’s a felicitous loose sally concerning common practices that have passed largely without notice.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-100442-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.”...
The writing life at age 85.
In this collection of 14 autobiographical essays, former U.S. Poet Laureate Hall (Christmas at Eagle Pond, 2012, etc.) reflects on aging, death, the craft of writing and his beloved landscape of New Hampshire. Debilitated by health problems that have affected his balance and ability to walk, the author sees his life physically compromised, and “the days have narrowed as they must. I live on one floor eating frozen dinners.” He waits for the mail; a physical therapist visits twice a week; and an assistant patiently attends to typing, computer searches and money matters. “In the past I was often advised to live in the moment,” he recalls. “Now what else can I do? Days are the same, generic and speedy….” Happily, he is still able to write, although not poetry. “As I grew older,” he writes, “poetry abandoned me….For a male poet, imagination and tongue-sweetness require a blast of hormones.” Writing in longhand, Hall revels in revising, a process that can entail more than 80 drafts. “Because of multiple drafts I have been accused of self-discipline. Really I am self-indulgent, I cherish revising so much.” These essays circle back on a few memories: the illness and death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, which sent him into the depths of grief; childhood recollections of his visits to his grandparents’ New Hampshire farm, where he helped his grandfather with haying; grateful portraits of the four women who tend to him: his physical therapist, assistant, housekeeper and companion; and giving up tenure “for forty joyous years of freelance writing.”
That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.” For the author, writing has been, and continues to be, his passionate revenge against diminishing.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0544287044
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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