by Czeslaw Milosz & edited by Bogdana Carpenter & Madeline G. Levine ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2001
A good introduction to Milosz’s prose work, capturing the range of a memorable mind.
Prose miscellany by the famed poet and Nobel laureate (Milosz’s ABC’s, 2000, etc.) proves he does not need funny spacing to dazzle his readers.
Spanning more than a half-century of the author’s life and thought, the collection mingles free-floating whimsy and earthbound gravitas as it probes the eternal questions of life from some remarkably fresh vantage points. The brief essay “Miss Anna and Miss Dora” manages to hit on the frailty of human existence, the vagaries of memory, and the birth of sympathy in a swirling loop of emotion that never skitters toward the mawkish—and in only two pages. Continuing on, and with a generosity bordering on the motherly, he pours out essays for your delectation, from biographies of friends and acquaintances to musings on human nature and excurses on the state of poetry. “Anus Mundi” ponders the creation of lyric poetry after Auschwitz; “Carmel” meanders along the California coast with Robinson Jeffers’s ashes in the air; “Letter to Jerzy Andrzejewski” praises the nobility of doubt. The maxims, anecdotes, and aphorisms culled from his notebook teem with humor, insight, and luminous warmth. “I am here,” Milosz states in “My Intention”: “and the only thing we can do is try to communicate with one another.” The breathtaking evocativeness of Milosz’s prose coupled with its radiant reflections creates a meaningful sense of synergy with his mind. The introduction by editors Carpenter and Levine provides modest access to his world, although it could offer more detail and biography for readers new to this writer.
A good introduction to Milosz’s prose work, capturing the range of a memorable mind.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-25890-2
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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by Czeslaw Milosz & translated by Madeline G. Levine
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by Czeslaw Milosz & translated by Madeline G. Levine
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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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