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ANATOMY OF RESTLESSNESS

SELECTED WRITINGS 1969-1989

The travel writer and memoirist Andrew Harvey said of the late Chatwin (What Am I Doing Here?, 1989, etc.) that ``nearly every writer of my generation has wanted, above all, to have written his books.'' This collection of miscellaneous pieces published for the first time in book form will only fuel that envy. There is a little something here for everyone: short stories of smoky debauch, like ``Milk,'' or ``The Attractions of France,'' with its quick slap at racism; singular takes on place, from Timbuktu to the venues in which Chatwin liked to write—a mud hut, a signaling tower in Tuscany; a wicked social history of Capri during the early part of this century, featuring the exotic figures of Axel Munthe, Baron Jacques AdelswÑrd-Fersen, and Curzio Malaparte; an essay renouncing possessions and collecting (an interesting sidebar to his novel Utz); a critique of the ``second-rate'' Robert Louis Stevenson; a history of the doomed efforts of Antonio Soto to bring anarchism to Patagonia; formal essays on nomadism, pilgrimage, and the traveler's experience of returning home. He allows readers into his London bedsitter, though it is evident that he is more at home on the road, persistently drawn to strange landscapes and weird personalities (all the better if they are touched by evil or asceticism). The writing is tense, wound as tight as a clock's spring, the author seeming by turns sinister and superior and often on a very ragged edge, constantly testing his power of endurance, obsessively seeking a measure of himself in each piece. He crawls all over his topics, gets immersed, so much so that he has been labeled by some with his subjects' qualities: fascist, dilettante, deeply strange. But he is too fast-footed to fall for smoke and nonsense—confrontational and oblique, wry and enthralled, uneasy and opinionated, snob, amateur, always original—and specious categorizations simply don't stick. Even posthumously Chatwin remains, in a word, awesome.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-670-86859-0

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996

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NUTCRACKER

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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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

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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