The subjects in this collection of scrupulous, varied, but sometimes ephemeral essays from poet and novelist Leithauser (Seaward, 1993, etc.) range from mathematical to literary creativity, from Japan to Iceland. Whether writing about his intellectual leanings or new locations, Leithauser has a bifurcated, paradoxical attraction to the rational and the irrational, but he can cleverly isolate the rarefied points of their intersection: computerized chess, the literature of science biographies, the freewheeling quantum prose of Italo Calvino, the ratiocinated ghost stories of Henry James, the enigmatic novels of Kobe Abe. The collection's best is a lengthy piece of New Yorker reportage on a computer chess tournament, which is replete with astute, poetic reflections on mathematics, artificial intelligence, and human creativity. In lesser pieces, apart from functional but disposable book reviews, Leithauser courts the supererogatory (detailed but unexceptional essays on H.G. Wells, Thomas Pynchon, and, his personal favorite, Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness) as well as the merely idiosyncratic (reviews of Colin Martindale's statistics-based aesthetics in The Clockwork Muse or Austin Wright's cult-novel utopia, Islandia). In ``Places,'' Leithauser tellingly opens with the multiple expatriate Lafcadio Hearn, who popularized Japan at the turn of the century but, he notes, could not truly penetrate the Meiji zeitgeist. Leithauser's own, literate forays into Japan popularize its more important, relatively unexported pre- and postwar authors, such as recent Nobel Prize winner Abe (now slightly less obscure in America). Though under-represented by comparison, Iceland benefits more than Japan from Leithauser's literary approach to its history and carefully preserved language. As Leithauser remarks about his attraction to Iceland (and by extension, all the topics here), he needs subjects remote from his experience and literary tradition, a guiding principle that leads both to exotic insights and, occasionally, to the abstruse.
Pub Date: Feb. 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42998-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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