A quirky book that is expertly written and impressively edifying.
Foley provides an instructional manual for building guitars and endeavors to establish guitar production as a scientific discipline in this nonfiction work.
The author doesn’t just want to impart the knowledge necessary to construct a well-playing guitar from scratch; Foley aims at a far grander ambition, the founding of “luthiery” as an independent branch of science. “What if someone who wanted to learn to service and build guitars could go to a university and study the physics, history, and technique of this craft and earn an accredited degree in this field? Wouldn’t that be fun!” The entire book is infused with this coupling of unabashed enthusiasm and technical aspiration. The author begins with an introduction to the “fundamental features of wave motion” as it applies to guitar playing, in particular string vibration and tone production. This attention to the scientific workings of the guitar informs the whole of Foley’s effort, which includes excerpts from various patent ideas for the invention of a new electric guitar pickup. Readers will also learn the history of the guitar, from its ancient beginnings as a stringed bow up to the period in which electric guitars were produced in the 20th century. The author does not neglect the basics—he presents an overview (for the novice) of the guitar’s most elemental components, but also covers some exceedingly esoteric topics like the “gravitational force on the string in the nut slot.” There is certainly some unnecessary meandering on Foley’s part—sections detailing a brief history of electricity and Democritus’ interpretation of the atom are surely digressions. However, these detours can be pardoned given the context of the author’s overriding objective, which is to create a new field of study, one that draws from all the relevant branches of science. This book likely won’t appeal to a general audience, but it will certainly be a treat for those few for whom it is intended: guitar enthusiasts who aspire to craft their own instruments and are deeply obsessed by the science of the guitar.
A quirky book that is expertly written and impressively edifying.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9798350922363
Page Count: 156
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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