Barnes biographer Philip Herring introduces this comprehensive collection—every tale known to have been written by Barnes—which will be of great interest to scholars and devotees. Others, however, might be confused by the inadequately annotated gathering, since the 41 stories are not dated, nor are the original places of publication noted. Most of the early fiction (written for weekly magazines) is identifiable by its melodramatic naturalism: slangy stories of urban romance that emphasize class distinctions and the harsher realities of city life, featuring bohemians in Greenwich Village, dance-hall girls, and immigrant workers. Then, after roughly a hundred pages, the high priestess of modernism emerges in dark lyrical tales of disaffection and alienation. With their cosmopolitan settings and points of view, Barnes's mature work displays all the ambiguity, world weariness, and cynicism that distinguish Nightwood (1936), her dense, elusive modern masterpiece. There are several stories about dying aristocrats, beset by age, indifferent to their past. ``The Terrorists'' is a scathing view of la vie bohÇmienne (cafe revolutionaries preach destruction while indulging their appetite for the good life), and the particular horrors of modern life are on view in stories like ``Oscar,'' with its intimations of incest, madness, and murder. Mismatched lovers are common in Barnes's work: older women entertain young men in hopes of staving off decay; a mother falls in love with her daughter's suitor; a doctor's wife randomly beds a salesman to debase herself; a wealthy woman wants to marry her footman; and two coquettish sisters tantalize Parisian gentlemen. At the center of many of these mordant tales are relations that lead to spiritual death, if not actual destruction. ``Dusie,'' a portrait of bohemian lesbians in Paris, recalls the pervasive smolder of decay and decadence in Nightwood. The best were already available in other collections, but it's always worthwhile to see an author complete. Unfortunately, you'll need a bibliography to locate many of these pieces in Barnes's unusual career.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 1-55713-226-7
Page Count: 470
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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