Odd musings and wanderings in out-of-the-way places: an intricate fable from a popular German novelist, now making his US debut. Graham Greene casts a long shadow through Kirchhoff's narrative, in style if not in tone. The center of attention is Kurt Lukas, a German fashion model who comes to rest on a suitably godforsaken Philippine island full of European priests. For reasons that are never fully hinted at—much less made clear—Kurt has decided to drop out of things for a while, and the mission fathers (who seem only marginally more balanced than he is) take him in gladly and do their best to keep him. They are helped along by Mayla, their orphaned housekeeper and surrogate daughter, who wastes no time in seducing Kurt with her virginity. The impending revolution that hovers in the background makes the seclusion of Kurt and Mayla's pastorale all the weirder—as does the fact that every single one of the priests is in love with her and makes a point of confessing his sexual transgressions to Kurt at the earliest opportunity. There is a real power and elegance in Kirchhoff's story, but it is one that requires a realistic (rather than imaginative) background—otherwise, the subtle economy of metaphor and suggestion will be (and is) overwhelmed and swallowed up by a tide of fantasy. How much of the book's weakness can be ascribed to the (clear and generally quite readable) translation is uncertain, but there is an unquestionable gap between the depth and assurance of the author's descriptive powers and the overall flatness of the work as a whole. A beautiful mess that could've worked: too much is built upon too slight a foundation.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84261-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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