by Eds. of The Paris Review ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003
Like the Paris Review itself: a high-toned, occasionally old-fashioned, indisputable repository of accomplished writing.
Invigorating anthology of work from the noted literary journal, published in celebration of its 50th anniversary.
While many literary magazines fade when “the enthusiasm of their editors and the number of subscribers flags,” notes founding editor George Plimpton in his introduction, the Paris Review has continued to provide a launching pad for major writers just beginning their careers. As the unwieldy title infers, it’s organized into broad subject categories, each containing poems, stories, novel excerpts, some nonfiction, and snippets from the magazine’s long-running series of interviews, “The Art of Fiction,” which Plimpton describes as “a DNA of literature.” While some contributors are relative newcomers, like the poet Rachel Wetzsteon and short-story author Daniel Libman, most are enduring figures in letters, ranging from Robert Stone, John Updike, and V.S. Naipaul to Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, and Susan Sontag. Veterans like Raymond Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason appear alongside such current trendsetters as David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Lethem; elsewhere, so-called “cult” writers Charles D’Ambrosio, Jim Crace, and Joanna Scott provide thought-provoking entries. Moments of excellence abound: Larry Brown’s raw story “Roadside Resurrection”; a brief jagged selection from Malcolm Lowry’s “Lunar Caustic”; Donald Barthelme’s horny, fragmented, typically ahead-of-its-time “Alice”; Grace Paley’s searing and equally prescient imagining of child murder, “The Little Girl”; Lucille Clifton’s poetic evocation of Lorena Bobbitt; John Cheever’s and Zelda Fitzgerald’s respective annotations of instability; edgy poems of war and death from Ha Jin, Thom Gunn, and W.S. Merwin. Despite their patchwork quality, the excerpted interviews are often luminous, particularly for aspiring writers: Hemingway recalls writing three stories in one day; Nabokov remarks of Lolita, “I do not give a damn for public morals, in America or elsewhere”; James Salter asserts that only prose, poems, and books endure; and John le Carré explains why a Russian arms dealer told him to “fuck off.”
Like the Paris Review itself: a high-toned, occasionally old-fashioned, indisputable repository of accomplished writing.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-42238-5
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
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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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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