disparate writers. (11 b&w photos)
Probing, challenging literary profiles of a dozen 20th-century women whose personal and public concerns encompass sex,
race, politics, and, of course, the roles of women. All of these portraits were originally published in The New Yorker, and they form a pretty eclectic group: Gertrude Stein and Mae West, Margaret Mitchell and Zora Neale Hurston, Ayn Rand and Doris Lessing—as well as Ana‹s Nin, Eudora Welty, Marina Tsvetaeva, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and Olive Schreiner. Art historian Pierpont begins her good-humored and evenhanded examinations of the lives and work of this curious group with the story of South African writer Schreiner, whose bestselling 1883 novel, The Story of an African Farm, offered a bridge between God and Darwin to the spiritually confused. Freedom for women to love and work is also a theme of Schreiner’s writings, and freedom in general—sexual, artistic, emotional, or political—is a concern of most of the women here. But Pierpont pokes beyond feminist concerns, linking biography, literature, history, and culture. Margaret Mitchell’s racism was ill-concealed in Gone With the Wind, for instance, yet she brought to the surface a yearning for romance novels that has yet to go dry; Hannah Arendt criticized the Jews as participating in their own annihilation in The Origins of Totalitarianism; Zora Neale Hurston defied Harlem Renaissance critics who objected to the use of black vernacular, among other things, in her novels. The communist Doris Lessing and the capitalist Ayn Rand make curious book mates, as do the flamboyant Mae West and the "unfailingly courteous" Eudora Welty and others; it must be said that Pierpont does not always pair her subjects together convincingly. Individually, however, these are compelling and provocative essays, offering fresh insights into the lives and works of the
disparate writers. (11 b&w photos)Pub Date: March 7, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-43106-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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