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PROMISCUOUS

Name: PROMISCUOUS
Author: Bernard Avishai
ISBN: 978-0-300-15190-9

PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT AND OUR DOOMED PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

by Bernard Avishai ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2012

A companion volume that enhances appreciation of the novel.

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A spirited engagement with the 1969 breakthrough novel that brought Philip Roth both renown and notoriety.

It would be easy to form misleading impressions from this critical analysis of Portnoy’s Complaint. The fact that it’s an academic study from a celebrated university press might suggest that this book would drain all the fun from Portnoy. To the contrary, this critical work, written by a friend of the author, is very much in the spirit of the book to which it responds. Harvard Business Review contributing editor Avishai (The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last, 2008, etc.) ventures far and wide over literary, philosophical and other cultural touchstones, providing a context for Roth’s novel that encompasses James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Jackson Pollock and Judd Apatow. Avishai proves both an informed and engaging guide to the novel and its legacy. In a deft turn of critical praise, he writes of the novel’s expressing “the dirt of desire after the hygiene of childhood.” He explains how the novel is very much of its time yet transcends its time, and of how it has been perceived as quintessentially Jewish yet is ultimately emancipating in the way it resonates so far beyond the Jewish experience. Drawing on interviews with Roth and access to his notes, Avishai deals with the issue that has long been central to Roth: the blurring of fact and fiction, of novel and confession. Avishai builds a strong case that Portnoy is not Roth, and that the protagonist might even be the object of the author’s satire, along with psychoanalysis and pretty much everything else the novel addresses. “The joke was on everybody—parents, lovers, tribes, patients, psychoanalysts—which is another way of saying it was on the act of reading itself,” he writes, while elsewhere describing the progression of Portnoy “from a great farce into an unnerving mystery.”

A companion volume that enhances appreciation of the novel.

Pub Date: May 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-300-15190-9

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012

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.