Elegant and inspired: just the thing to read along with Basho and other pilgrims into Japan’s back country.
A meditative travelogue through a part of Japan few outsiders ever see.
“We carry our lives on our backs and traverse the spine of the world, no humans for miles, no routes down, just forward or back, the beast below always shifting, always ready to heave us off.” So writes Mod, a resident of Japan, in this narrative of meandering on long solo walks through the quiet woods of the country’s Kii Peninsula. Bordered by some of Japan’s largest cities, the lightly populated region is “one of the rainiest places in the earth’s subtropical region,” wetter than even the Amazon, as attested to by Mod’s lovely if somber black-and-white photographs, studies in mist and fog. The people Mod encounters in the rugged mountains in the time of Covid-19 are resigned to the injustice of the world and the rough wisdom of nature. Says one woman of the virus and its effects, “the world all goin’ sideways…and don’t know if it can right itself.” Others, men mostly, are quick to offer booze, seemingly looking for an excuse to get blotto, an invitation to which Mod, a nondrinker, politely declines in fluent Japanese. Everyone, though, is kindly disposed if sometimes gruff, living examples of the Japanese concept of “yoyū,” “a word that somehow means: the excess provided when surrounded by a generous abundance.” Much of Mod’s battery of facts comes from what he calls the “John Effect,” honoring a friend who is deeply learned in the history and culture of every corner of Japan, including “these recondite hinterlands.” He addresses his narrative to another friend from long ago, living somewhere in an America that Mod barely recognizes (“How can you say that a country ‘loves’ you without providing health care?”), but his account reaches far beyond private reminiscence to become an exemplary travel narrative, instructive and entertaining.
Elegant and inspired: just the thing to read along with Basho and other pilgrims into Japan’s back country.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593732540
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.
Celebrating a beloved artist.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of works by British-born artist David Hockney (b. 1937) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, this lushly illustrated volume offers a detailed overview of the artist’s life and work, along with chapters focused on his various styles and subject matter, a chronology, and a glossary of the many techniques he employed in his art, including camera lucida, computer, and video. Contributors of essays include noted art historians and curators, such as Norman Rosenthal, who edited the volume; Simon Schama; Anne Lyles; James Cahill; and François Michaud. Growing up in the north of England, Hockney was drawn to the light and sparkle that he found in Hollywood movies. When he finally arrived in Los Angeles, the sunlit landscapes inspired him, and his new sense of artistic freedom concurred with sexual freedom: As a gay man, he felt liberated from the constraints that had weighed on him in Britain, even in the “relative Bohemia” of the Royal College of Art. Essayists reflect on his artistic interests, such as landscapes, portraiture, flowers, and the opera—for which he created boldly exuberant sets—as well as on his influences and experimentation. Michaud examines the impact on Hockney of a visit to Paris in the 1970s, where he became familiar with Henri Matisse and his contemporaries from museum exhibitions. In the 1990s, visiting his mother and friends in Yorkshire, Hockney painted both outdoors and in the studio, experimenting with various media—including the photocopier and fax machine—as he worked to render the woodsy landscape. As a companion to the exhibition, the volume offers stunning reproductions of Hockney’s prolific works. Enormously popular with museumgoers, Hockney, Rosenthal exults, “transforms the ordinary and the everyday into the remarkable.”
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780500029527
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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