This collection of essays by hot novelist Wallace (Infinite Jest, 1996, etc.) is sometimes tiresome but often truly rewarding.
Wallace is a fine prose stylist of the post-Beat school. His long sentences overflow with prepositional phrases; commas are scarce. At his best—which is to say, about half the time here—Wallace writes with an intensity that transforms rambling reportage into a sui generis mode of weird philosophizing. He makes deft use of footnotes to pile up insights beneath the flow of his main line of thought. Especially brilliant is the collection's opening essay, in which Wallace looks back on his childhood experiences as a Midwestern junior tennis star through the lens of his collegiate obsession with mathematics. The tennis world, treated at length in Infinite Jest, resurfaces in a sensitive profile of rising American player Michael Joyce. Otherwise, Wallace's best work comes in two pieces that originally appeared in Harper's: a ferocious investigative report on the culture of luxury cruises, and the record of another carnival voyage, this one a trip to the Illinois State Fair. A book review competently discusses literary-theoretical debates over the death-of-the-author thesis. Elsewhere in the volume, Wallace takes determined dives into banality. A more judicious, albeit less focused, effort finds Wallace on the set with filmmaker David Lynch, whom he presents as a contemporary artistic hero. A sprawling meditation on television and contemporary fiction lays out many intriguing theories, but its main point, that TV irony snares rather than liberates viewers, doesn't make news. At his best, the exuberant Wallace amazes with his “Taoistic ability to control via noncontrol.” But—to continue quoting from his opening tour-de-force, “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley''—eschewing discipline exacts a price: “Force without law has no shape, only tendency and duration.''
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-316-91989-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Volume nine strains a bit to achieve its predecessors' diversity by stretching the definition of ``essay.'' Take, for example, the two longest contributions. In ``Trucking Through the AIDS Belt'' Ted Conover spends time on the road with Central African truckers (``true museums of disease,'' a doctor calls them), while in ``The Last Shot'' Darcy Frey hangs out with black high school basketball players, examining the ``cherished parable'' that college scholarships provide a way out of the ghetto. (Frey has expanded this piece into a book. See p. 1185.) Frey's piece is excellent; Conover's, though more diffuse, is still pretty good. Yet it's questionable whether these in-depth reporting pieces can really be considered ``narrative essays'' (Kidder's term). Other entries collected by series editor Atwan and Pulitzer Prize-winning guest editor Kidder (Old Friends, 1993, etc.) hew more closely to the form. There is cultural commentary: Adam Gopnik on the ``High Morbid Manner'' in contemporary art, Cynthia Ozick finding echoes of Henry James in Salman Rushdie's appearance at a Paris seminar, David Denby celebrating a Dead White Male (Homer) on his return to Columbia nearly 30 years after graduation. There are reflections on our relationship to our habitat (William Langewiesche's marvelously lucid account of aviation's coming of age) and the animals we share it with (Vicki Hearne, in the collection's most delightfully offbeat entry, finding ``deep knowledge about animals...in a trained-orangutan act on a Las Vegas stage''). Disappointingly, the collection has only one essay on our political and social relations: James McPherson's vapid consideration of Martin Luther King's ideas about community. Lastly, there are lively autobiographical sketches. Treating a sadistic male patient, Lauren Slater finds surprising links to her anorexic past, while Lucy Grealy, assessing years of reconstructive surgery, ponders the link between the face and the self. Outshining them all is the series' ever-bright star, Stanley Elkin. In incandescent prose, he writes about the worst days of his life (``the season of my madness''); the result is both harrowing and wildly funny. A solid addition to an annual series that has won many plaudits.
Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-69254-7
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A comprehensive address of nuclear power geared toward citizens privy to the complex issues involved.
The re-emergence of nuclear power as an energy source lends new vigor to economist Ahmed’s 30-year-old study.
Nuclear power is very much back on the table after years of legislative and public resistance, as fossil fuels have shown themselves to be vulnerable from almost every angle. Handling radioactive waste has been foremost of concern in this re-emergence, but as Ahmed ably–if in tinder-dry academese–demonstrates, a number of other concerns that most be addressed to gain a full grasp on nuclear-power feasibility. This has been the case since the late 1970s, when this book first appeared. Ahmed’s text serves two different audiences, one being the professional energy analyst who’s comfortable in the heavy weather of econometrics, flow charts that resemble the works of Jackson Pollack, parameter estimations and microeconomic simulations. The visuals provide a credible economic framework to thoroughly examine the uranium fuel situation: resources and reserves, supply and demand, prices and costs of extraction and refinement. These concerns dovetail with the other audience of the book–the lay reader curious about the nature of U.S. uranium reserves, the cost of nuclear-power production, those in control of the resources and the processes associated with mining and milling. If the book shows its age by concentrating on the light-water reactor fission program, it is also prescient about the potential for industry monopolization. “Possible producers’ collusion can be inferred from the future trend in the prices of uranium,” the author writes, and price forecasts have proven very close to today’s production prices. The system flow diagram of power generation costs is invaluable, as it also serves as a remarkable overview of what is required–fuel, capital, operating and maintenance factors–to produce even a single watt of nuclear energy.
A comprehensive address of nuclear power geared toward citizens privy to the complex issues involved.Pub Date: July 17, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4196-3829-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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