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PAINTED PARAGRAPHS

INSPIRED DESCRIPTION FOR WRITERS AND READERS

In the second volume of an intended trilogy about writing, novelist/memoirist (and longtime Kirkus reviewer) Newlove (Curranne Trueheart, 1986, etc.) infuses readers with a sense of the power that real feeling, honestly observed, brings to great writing. Newlove sings and celebrates, and sometimes playfully deflates, gorgeous passages of description from Hemingway, Bunyan, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Chandler, Mailer, Whitman, and many others. By describing how a particular passage strikes him—sometimes in the back muscles, sometimes straight through the heart—Newlove shows that it's earthy feeling rather than any superhuman feat of intellect or froth of words that carves out the indelible ``spiritual landscape'' of a Tolstoy or Shakespeare. Riffing on one classic passage after another, bubbling over with an infectious love of language, Newlove demonstrates how vision and moral force in literature flow always from some true perception of the value of life: Truth must come from ``a man's grip on life.'' Hence we taste the brine that Hemingway tastes in the oysters he gobbles in Paris; we share a luscious, greedy snack of ham with Thomas Wolfe; we embrace the world of the body with Whitman; we drink in horror at the hands of Conrad. We even sample the fall and rise of Newlove himself as ``Drunkspeare,'' an alcoholic writer step-by-step restored to his exuberant senses. In some of his most useful passages, Newlove jokes about greats like ``Wild Bill'' Shakespeare so that we may see ``the simplicity, almost raggedness of his lines.'' Newlove freely abridges Hemingway, and prunes Conrad's jungle, but, strangely, he touches not a word in Mailer's Ancient Evenings—seeing ``brilliancies everywhere—and not a stuffed bird among them.'' Here, as in First Paragraphs (1992), the self-styled ``Dr. Don'' gives transfusions of the living spirit ``that breathes out of the writer's breast.''

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1993

ISBN: 0-8050-2978-8

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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NUTCRACKER

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

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