An autodidact's breezy digest of the historical and personal importance of the book, with few intellectual pretensions and only a couple of political and cultural ones. Burns's career began in television, first as a news reporter, then as a media critic, and finally as a dissenter with his first book, Broadcast Blues (1993). For his defense of the book and the pleasure of reading, Burns artfully employs his genial style, which is as easily read as delivered on TV, despite occasional slips from chattiness into sarcasm. In print, he has the advantage of embellishing his cribs from the Durants' Story of Civilization, Daniel Boorstin's The Americans, and Neil Postman's techno-cultural criticism with amusing anecdotes and remarks from the likes of H.L. Mencken, Goethe, and others. Burns follows up a whirlwind history of writing, printing, and bookmaking (encompassing the library of Alexandria under Ptolemy and monastic scribes of the Middle Ages) with an even broader one of censorship from Protagoras and Milton to Joseph McCarthy and contemporary school boards. In the latter case, the brief accounts of Anthony Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice and the genteel censor Thomas Bowdler are matched with contemporary incidents such as attacks on Huckleberry Finn and Burns's own vivid experience of a small-town book burning, which he filmed for television. These historical and contemporary parallels have more force than the author's second-hand diatribes against slipping educational standards and the epistemological evils of deconstruction. Still, he optimistically if sentimentally frames all this with his and his son's mutual childhood enjoyment of Peter Pan. In this switch in medium from the box to the book, Burns has a more or less effective forum for his pop critiques.
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1995
ISBN: 0-87975-004-5
Page Count: 172
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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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