Strictly for the fan club.
A loosely fitting collection of shaggy-dog stories, anecdotes and book reports by novelist and screenwriter Gifford (The Stars Above Veracruz, 2006, etc.).
Gifford allows, early on, that it is his good fortune to have survived as a writer when “only one percent of writers are able to support themselves solely by their writing.” In some parts of the world, in fact, he is famous; one of the more charming of the travel vignettes finds him in a Cohiba factory in Cuba, where a lector—a person who reads aloud to the rollers of big cigars—smitten by his Wild at Heart promises to read it next, after finishing an off-the-rack romance novel. Some of the anecdotes are mildly cautionary: It’s never a good idea, we learn, to go shooting with William Burroughs. Some are quietly illuminating; a scholarly film buff, Gifford turns in a fine reading of Marlon Brando’s enigmatic film One-Eyed Jacks, even if he cannot resist an annoying breeziness as he goes (Karl Malden: “The best nose in the business.” Richard Widmark: “a considerably thinner actor [than Brando]”). At the center of the book, accounting for more than a third of its bulk, is a less successful enterprise: a set of brief essays on Gifford’s favorite books. It’s thin gruel; in 83 words, for instance, Gifford dispatches The Great Gatsby as “perhaps the only almost-perfect novel ever written”—whatever that means—while an even shorter assessment of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger avers that “Hamsun was a Nazi sympathizer, maybe worse, but there is still truth in this book that doesn’t go away.” Gifford aficionados will surely be pleased, though, by the book’s concluding pages, which contain his libretto for a Japanese “action musical” complete with a burning curtain and an omniscient hermaphrodite.
Strictly for the fan club.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-56858-334-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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