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SELECTED CRONICAS

A vertiginous dash through the mind of a highly idiosyncratic and inventive writer. Lispector, the Brazilian novelist (The Hour of the Star, 1990, etc.), was from 1967 to 1973 also a columnist for the Jornal do Brasil, the largest newspaper in Rio de Janeiro. This collection of 156 of her columns (crìnicas) makes the work of her American counterparts, from that of Anna Quindlen to Jimmy Breslin, seem predictable, narrowly focused, and pedestrian. If a newspaper column can be compared with a social visit from the writer, who drops by often enough to become a friend, then Lispector can be said to be an enchanting, unnerving, and sometimes giddy visitor. She casts a wide net in these pieces. There are some deeply cryptic gleanings. (``I dreamed that a fish was taking its clothes off and remained naked'' is the entire text of one piece.) There are also several series of full-fledged stories, including ``The Princess,'' told in five parts, and ``The Egg and the Chicken,'' told in three. Other columns resemble conventional feature writing. ``Lightning Interview with Pablo Neruda (II),'' for example, poses questions to the poet and duly provokes answers. ``Does writing make the anguish of living more bearable?'' Lispector asks. She further asks to the poet to ``say something to surprise me.'' Most of the time, the need to surprise herself seems to guide the columns, and the result is a body of work likely to give pause to North Americans, who seem to prefer their journalism straightforward and flat-footed. Lispector's is headily expansive, a reprieve from the usual. Of course, the pressure to write for each Saturday edition does lead to various ups and downs; the downs include facile moments when even Lispector's imagination temporarily folds its tent. But the stumbling is rare. A provocative revision of journalistic possibilities.

Pub Date: Nov. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-8112-1340-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: New Directions

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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