A first-rate collection from a first-rate writer.
An eclectic and engaging selection of recent pieces, mostly about other writers, from the award-winning novelist (The March, 2005, etc.).
Doctorow’s playful title (it alludes to those who create, not those who believe we were created) masks a serious purpose—to examine the mystery and the magic of human creation. Although he focuses principally on novelists and playwrights, he includes a very strong piece about Einstein, whose creativity, Doctorow argues, though astonishing, was nonetheless similar to the acts of novelists and artists and creative thinkers of all sorts. These essays form an impressive collection, in one sense, because they are so different from one another. They all deal with “creationists,” but they originally appeared as speeches, forewords or afterwords to other books, remarks at symposia, essays in literary or political journals. As a result, although each bears Doctorow’s signature intelligence and lyricism, each has a singularity, as well; these are not cookie-cutter pieces lifted from the same piece of rolled dough. Doctorow has no peer in his powerful use of imagery. In his wonderful piece on Melville, he offers the picture of Moby-Dick swallowing not just the Pequod but the entire English language. He notes that Hemingway found the “most romantic face” of “our great operative myth of rugged individualism.” He blasts Margaret Thatcher and George Bush; he writes hymns to Arthur Miller and John Dos Passos and Harpo Marx. The range of these pieces reveals Doctorow’s wide reading and capacious mind: He takes on the book of Genesis, plus Malraux, Poe (whose poetry Doctorow disdains), Twain, Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Kafka, W.G. Sebald and others. Also present are some keen-edged political and social commentary. “Why write when you could be shooting someone?” he asks at the outset. And his final piece (about thermonuclear bombs) notes that World War II brought an end to the quaint distinction between combatants and noncombatants. The bomb is an equal-opportunity destroyer.
A first-rate collection from a first-rate writer.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6495-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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