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REDNECKS AND BLUENECKS

Name: REDNECKS AND BLUENECKS
Author: Chris Willman
ISBN: 1-59558-017-4

THE POLITICS OF COUNTRY MUSIC

by Chris Willman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2005

Full of surprises—who knew that Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash hated Dubya so?

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Country is, by definition, the music of country people. But it’s now the province of the suburbanites, and the suburbanites have gone fascist, and so has mainstream country music.

So run the main outlines of Entertainment Weekly writer Willman’s study of country music in the modern era, though his argument proceeds with considerably greater nuance. Country has always been full of politics, but that all changed when Garth Brooks came along and dumbed it down for an increasingly dumb audience. Then along came Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks to profess shame for being from Texas, whose governor-turned-president was now looking for a war. All hell broke loose: The suburbanites had pitchforks and torches, and only one big radio station in the country would play the Chicks’ treasonous (and hitherto hit-making) music. Willman goes into much detail on the Maines event, which had the effect of drawing out the cryptorightists in Nashville to rally round the flag: Travis Tritt, the awful Brooks & Dunn, the still more awful Toby Keith. Even the nonpolitical Vince Gill was heard mouthing Bushian pieties, though his pal Rodney Crowell insists that Vince is really a liberal at heart. (Steve Earle—who admits to packing up for New York because the split-level hicks are getting just a little too scary—vouches for Gill’s credentials, too.) Willman’s stroll through the minefields is engaging, and he tries to be evenhanded, though those scary hicks sometimes move him to passion, as when he notes, relative to an anti-Maines protest featuring a demonstrator who’s been loudly accusing Chicks fans of lesbianism in the presence of his teenage daughter, “nothing says ‘joint custody’ like a night of father/daughter dyke baiting.”

Full of surprises—who knew that Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash hated Dubya so?

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2005

ISBN: 1-59558-017-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: The New Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005

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.