This slender, exquisite book rewards on many levels.
A father’s death inspires a son’s literary voyage.
If Mendelsohn’s previously acclaimed books The Lost (2013), a personal memoir about the Holocaust, and An Odyssey (2017), about his father’s joyous discovery of Homer’s book and death, are two rings, this is the third and final ring that interweaves and interlocks them together. Its “metamorphosis” began with lectures on the Odyssey at the author’s alma mater, the University of Virginia. He was frustrated as he tried to shape them into a book until a friend suggested he write it as a “ring composition… elaborate series of interlocked narratives, each nested within another in the manner of Chinese boxes or Russian dolls.” In the first of three sections, “The Lycée Français,” Mendelsohn tells the story of Erich Auerbach, a German Jew who secured a position at the University of Istanbul, where he wrote the influential Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a “paean to the civilization of the continent he has just fled,” a study in which the author “seeks to understand how literature makes reality feel real.” In “The Education of Young Girls,” Mendelsohn discusses the massively popular The Adventures of Telemachus, an “imitative and inventive” narrative about Odysseus’ son written in the 1690s by the theologian François Fenelón. Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Thomas Jefferson were huge fans. In “The Temple,” Mendelsohn examines The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, whose literary “meanderings,” just like Mendelsohn’s own book, “ultimately form a giant ring that ties together many disparate tales and experiences.” This luminous narrative, in which the tales of each of Mendelsohn’s three chosen exiled writers appealingly intertwine, is about many things—memory, literature, family, immigration, and religion—and it ends where it began, with a “wanderer” entering “an unknown city after a long voyage.”
This slender, exquisite book rewards on many levels.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8139-4466-1
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Univ. of Virginia
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dillard’s story reflects maturity and understanding from someone who was forced to mature and understand too much too soon.
A measured memoir from a daughter of the famous family.
Growing up in the Institute of Basic Life Principles community, which she came to realize was “a cult, thriving on a culture of fear and manipulation,” Duggar and her 18 siblings were raised never to question parental authority. As the author recalls, she felt no need to, describing the loving home of her girlhood. When a documentary crew approached her father, Jim Bob, and proposed first a series of TV specials that would be called 17 Kids and Counting (later 18 and 19 Kids and Counting), he agreed, telling his family that this was a chance to share their conservative Christian faith. It was also a chance to become wealthy, but Jill, who was dedicated to following the rules, didn’t question where the money went. A key to her falling out with her family was orchestrated by Jim Bob, who introduced her to missionary Derick Dillard. Their wedding was one of the most-watched episodes of the series. Even though she was an adult, Jill’s parents and the show continued to expect more of the young couple. When they attempted to say no to filming some aspects of their lives, Jill discovered that a sheet of paper her father asked her to sign the day before her wedding was part of a contract in which she had unwittingly agreed to full cooperation. Writing about her sex offender brother, Josh, and the legal action she and Derick had to take to get their questions answered, Jill describes how she was finally able—through therapy, prayer, and the establishment of boundaries—to reconcile love for her parents with Jim Bob’s deception and reframe her faith outside the IBLP.
Dillard’s story reflects maturity and understanding from someone who was forced to mature and understand too much too soon.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781668024447
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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