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WEREWOLF

A TRUE STORY OF DEMONIC POSSESSION

With werewolves now a hot fiction item (for instance, Michael Cadnum's St. Peter's Wolf, p. 416, or Dennis Danvers's Wilderness, p. 266), it's no surprise to see a ``true'' account of the hairy beasts. Too bad it's by the Warrens, those professional ``demonologists'' last seen facing down Satan and his minions (and Bigfoot too) in Ghost Hunters (1989). Before the Warrens enter the chronicle at hand (told in narrative, Q&A-interview, and diary forms), though, we're regaled in the alphabet-block prose of their usual coauthor, Chase, with the sad saga of Bill Ramsey, the book's fourth credited author. Ramsey, you see, was the werewolf—well, actually it turns out that he wasn't a werewolf at all but, as the text describes him, a ``wolfman'' like Lon Chaney, Jr., in those 40's horror films—well, actually it turns out that he wasn't a wolfman at all but a young working-class British bloke who thought he was changing into a wolf, which is why he tried to bite all those friends and young ladies and cops and nurses. But it wasn't his fault: The Devil made him do it. Which is where the Warrens come in. In England on a promotional tour (neatly continued in the text: ```The Warrens are the most fascinating people I've ever interviewed,' '' an anonymous TV producer is quoted as saying), they learn of Ramsey's plight and pinpoint it as demonic possession. A bit of persuasion and Ramsey is off with them to the States, where their old colleague Bishop McKenna, also last seen in Ghost Hunters (``He's a very earnest and devout man. You just don't see his kind around a lot anymore,'' says Ed) exorcises the invading ``demon,'' setting Ramsey free. Skeptics, please note the Warrens' assurance that this is ``a carefully documented'' case (they forgot to include the documentation, though). As for us: Grrrrrrrrrr....

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-312-06493-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

Pub Date: April 21, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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