Powerful and inspirational: Messud is as fine a critic as she is a novelist.
A collection of essays fired by “the heartfelt conviction that nothing matters more” than “the power of the word.”
Messud sets the tone in her impassioned introduction, proclaiming the importance of literature “in a period which can feel like the dawn of a new Dark Ages.” Literature connects us to the experiences of others both past and present, she declares, engaging writer and reader in a vital exchange. Part 1, “Reflections,” opens with a suite of beautiful memory pieces about a peripatetic childhood—Messud had lived in three different countries and attended five different schools by the time she was 12—that left her with a permanent sense of being an outsider and the conviction that the inner life was the most important. Her parents, a Canadian woman who married a “pied-noir” displaced by the Algerian war for independence, shared this conviction: Messud pays tribute to the knowledge of the female literary tradition she acquired at her “Mother’s Knee”; and “The Road to Damascus,” a painful, moving piece about her father’s death, recalls his lifelong immersion in scholarship about the Middle East, sparked by his childhood in Beirut and Istanbul. The critical pieces in the second and third parts discuss individual works by literary and visual artists as varied as Albert Camus, Jane Bowles, Saul Friedlander, Alice Neel, and Marlene Dumas; the author discerns a common thread in their ability to convey their personal experiences and connect them to larger issues in the world. Messud seldom refers to her own accomplished fiction, but her sense of kinship with fellow writers is palpable, and a short, smart piece on “Teenage Girls” reveals the personal origins of her most recent novel, The Burning Girl (2017). The title essay, riffing on a comment in Thomas Bernhard’s novel The Loser, affirms that “even a single successful sentence can be transformative.” We can take that as Messud’s credo.
Powerful and inspirational: Messud is as fine a critic as she is a novelist.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00675-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.
One of the best pitchers of his generation—and often the only Black man on his team—shares an extraordinary life in baseball.
A high school star in several sports, Sabathia was being furiously recruited by both colleges and professional teams when the death of his grandmother, whose Social Security checks supported the family, meant that he couldn't go to college even with a full scholarship. He recounts how he learned he had been drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the first round over the PA system at his high school. In 2001, after three seasons in the minor leagues, Sabathia became the youngest player in MLB (age 20). His career took off from there, and in 2008, he signed with the New York Yankees for seven years and $161 million, at the time the largest contract ever for a pitcher. With the help of Vanity Fair contributor Smith, Sabathia tells the entertaining story of his 19 seasons on and off the field. The first 14 ran in tandem with a poorly hidden alcohol problem and a propensity for destructive bar brawls. His high school sweetheart, Amber, who became his wife and the mother of his children, did her best to help him manage his repressed fury and grief about the deaths of two beloved cousins and his father, but Sabathia pursued drinking with the same "till the end" mentality as everything else. Finally, a series of disasters led to a month of rehab in 2015. Leading a sober life was necessary, but it did not tame Sabathia's trademark feistiness. He continued to fiercely rile his opponents and foment the fighting spirit in his teammates until debilitating injuries to his knees and pitching arm led to his retirement in 2019. This book represents an excellent launching point for Jay-Z’s new imprint, Roc Lit 101.
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13375-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Roc Lit 101
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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