Sometimes-provocative material residing in a collection that often feels forced together.
An eclectic collection finds Lazar (Creative Writing/Columbia Coll., Chicago; Occasional Desire, 2013, etc.) attempting to reach beyond category, or at least beyond the personal essay.
The author’s hyper self-awareness may well be a mark of the personal essayist, often tempered by self-deprecation or wry humor, but the tone here is generally too elevated for that. Even the opening essay, “Ann; Death and the Maiden” is mostly about Lazar, who confesses, “writing this makes me queasy. I hope for obvious reasons.” Maybe not as queasy as readers, who learn about the writer’s former student, manic-depressive and suicidal, still married, with whom he conducted a sexually explosive relationship of “film noirish meetings in back alleys and cheap motels.” She wouldn’t take her medication and went off the rails, and they drifted apart; ultimately, he found out about her death on Facebook. “Have I been a flaneur of some of my own darkest impulses with some of my friends and a woman I’ve loved, being close enough to my own worst-case scenarios to feel their hot breath while watching others take the heat?” Both “flaneur” and “queasy” seem to be touchstones in the author’s writing, though he insists in a conversation on the essay (the collection’s longest piece) that when he writes of himself, it is never “just for the sake of my own self-analysis. The idea of that makes me queasy.” There are distinct parts to this collection: memoir-ish personal essays, ones that are more academic about the nature of the essay and the relationship of writer and reader, and a series of aphorisms that features a section on “Mothers, Etc.,” with drawings to illustrate. Among the nonmother aphorisms: “Far from the madding crowd—inside it. The flaneur”; “Hell is where you mostly live; heaven is where you rehab.”
Sometimes-provocative material residing in a collection that often feels forced together.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0206-2
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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