A must for Austen bibliophiles.
An elegant exploration into the curious journey of literary celebrity, as exhibited by Jane Austen.
Austen’s rise within the literary canon is reflected in modern culture by the many film versions and derivations of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and others, and in the ubiquitous inclusion of her works in academic curricula. Royal Society of Literature fellow Harman (Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 2006, etc.) delineates the growth of Austen’s fame as both a study of the process of getting published and acclaim as a writer, as well as the actual features of Austen’s work that make it both popular and divisive. The author declares Austen to be as difficult a biographical subject as Shakespeare, in that both left behind few details of their personal lives, making their mythologies all the more of a touchstone for adulation. Harman efficiently sketches the confined circumstances within which Austen, a financially dependent spinster, wrote and revised her novels over many years before they were published. The author ably captures the imperturbable belief that Austen must have had in her talent—she continued to write new novels, even though the first one, Sense and Sensibility, was not published until a few years before her death. Although Austen had a few admirers, the initial circulation of her work was limited. It was not until a biography written by her nephew, James Austen-Leigh, was published in 1870 that interest was revived in her work on a larger scale. Harman points out the key feature of Austen’s writing that finally resulted in her canonization within English literature—her ironic artistry as a keen observation tool of the truth of human nature. Detractors, ranging from Charlotte Brontë to Mark Twain, have decried the small-scale nature of her work, the focus on ordinary life and the lack of poetry. For Harman, it is this very accessibility that has resulted in her rise to global fame.
A must for Austen bibliophiles.Pub Date: March 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8258-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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