An unusually miscellaneous miscellany aptly described by its subtitle: marginal work from the late author who became the leading American short-story writer in the 70's. Barthelme the humorist is the preeminent figure on display here, whether in extended parodies and satires (``The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge,'' ``And Now Let's Hear It for the Ed Sullivan Show!'', ``Bunny Image, Loss of: The Case of Bitsy S.''); unsigned columns from the New Yorker's ``Notes and Comment'' pages; collages of old engravings shanghaied into ludicrously inappropriate narratives (``A Nation of Wheels,'' ``The Educational Experience,'' ``The Dassaud Prize''); or three formerly unpublished plays (``The Friends of the Family,'' ``The Conservatory,'' ``Snow White''). The revelation is how adept Barthelme was at recycling material for use in columns, sketches, stories, and plays—as indicated here by Herzinger's notes. The disappointments are, first, the slightness and datedness of so much of the material—parodies like ``That Cosmopolitan Girl'' and ``L'Lapse'' have dated almost as badly as their targets, and three plays mostly demonstrate why Barthelme was well-advised to give them up—and, second, the large number of reprints from earlier collections (31 of 63 pieces; Barthelme's 1974 miscellany Guilty Pleasures is picked particularly clean). The unpicked plums (a New Yorker interview with King Tut, a profile of artistic baseball greats T. S. Eliot, Django Reinhardt, Susan Sontag, Willem de Kooning, and Piet Mondrian) are few and far between; time and again, the pieces that most please turn out to be from Come Back, Dr. Caligari or Overnight to Many Distant Cities. Even minor Barthelme is better than no Barthelme. A few savory hints here whet the appetite for more: a promised collection of essays and interviews, another of uncollected stories. (Copiously illustrated with loopy prints, not seen but fondly remembered.)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40982-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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