``Gilded gutter life'' means rough but rich trade among gays, and Farson thus identifies the sex life of the English painter Francis Bacon (1909-92) with his work—which many think of with sheer horror. Farson (The Man Who Wrote Dracula, 1976; the fictional Swansdowne, 1987, etc.) was friends with Bacon for 40 years, and he intends a memoir here, not a biography, although the latter is charcoaled in amid the gay barhopping. Born in Dublin around the corner from Oscar Wilde's birthplace, Bacon was so wildly and ingeniously wise that his life seems secondary to his table talk, as captured here and in David Sylvestre's 1975 Interviews. Though eventually very wealthy, Bacon dismissed material possessions, lived in reclusive squalor, thought posterity was rubbish, and—to the outsider—seemed to project some ghastly self-hatred upon the monstrously distorted humans in his canvases. Bacon could paint as literally as anyone, was bored by mere likeness, and set out to distort reality into reality. He'd paint from photos rather than hurt the feelings of subjects who sat for him, then saw themselves ``damaged'' by his distortions. Says Farson: ``He...was totally amoral. He had little time for weakness in others and no patience with human foibles or small vanities. He was easily bored.... Even if he had not become a painter his personality was so original that he would have made an impression on his time.'' When his father found him dressing up in his mother's underwear at 15, he was shipped off to London to live alone on three pounds a week. Completely irreligious, he said he painted death as the shadow of life because he loved life so greatly. A physical masochist, a mental sadist, he offered as his favorite saying: ``We are meat. Cheerio!'' Like crawling in a tub of dead fish—but a great read.
Pub Date: March 14, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42632-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1994
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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