A popular cartoonist decides to hit the road to promote the latest collection of his strips. The gimmick: Let the fans pay in full for the junket. Piraro, a cool kinda '90s guy, is the creator of the syndicated daily cartoon ``Bizarro.'' He went to the Internet to recruit the help of devoted fans, pleading electronically for meals, lodging, and transportation during his ten-city book tour. He put the byte, so to speak, on adventuresome readers from California to Florida (where, he notes, the ``humidity is such that you need only to take a deep breath to quench your thirst''). After downloading the whimsical story of his shy youth, Piraro describes the trip and the obliging folk who fell in with his scheme. Some ``Bizarro'' enthusiasts staked him to meals, some lent him a spare room, some hauled him to book signings, and others provided airplane tickets. His evident fondness for them notwithstanding, he makes many seem like fugitives from an Ed Wood movie. There are overly neat yuppies and aging hippies, scary guys and predatory females (let's hope he used impenetrable pseudonyms for some of his hosts). Strange is the operative norm in America, according to this comical moocher. His freewheeling fans apparently enjoyed his fey humor and put up with his threats of incontinence. The conceit that game-show host Pat Sajak is his fairy godfather, making ethereal appearances like Billie Burke advising Judy Garland, is a running gag that soon runs out of steam. His minuscule odyssey concludes with a truly bizarre confessional regarding unanticipated discord at home. Neither Kuralt nor Kerouac on the road, Piraro offers a sporadically funny tale of a freeloader's pilgrimage to fanland. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8362-2173-7
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
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
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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