While the ending feels rushed, this lively account of youth culture adroitly evokes its time.
A gay teen from a small Oregon town falls in love with dance and a self-destructive new-wave underground in this debut coming-of-age memoir set in the radical 1980s Portland arts scene.
Knapp was in seventh grade when his queerness and nonconformity transformed him from an “outgoing, popular, naive little limpet” into a constant target of bullies and jocks. Embracing his status, he found a home among “the thespians, the smokers, punks, mods, the Wave-os” and in the local ballet studio, where he could express his emerging self. His parents, a kindergarten teacher and a college music professor in the town of Corvallis, Oregon, were well-meaning people who had little idea of how to deal with their maverick son except to be carefully willing to let him distance himself from them. Recognizing this offer of freedom as a form of rejection, the author explored his emerging sexuality and his art, concealing his self-consciousness with “eyeliner and a lotta what-have-yous.” He eventually abandoned the security of his family home and ran to Portland, where he became part of the desperate and thrilling community of the “lost, those who’d evicted hope.” High on a cocktail of artistic camaraderie, sexual discovery, the “tangible magic” of dance, and the dangers of the emerging AIDS epidemic and homophobic violence, he turned experience into movement. Knapp’s prose is energetic, defiant, and roguishly cadenced, as he evokes the youthful state of being “teenager know-it-all strong,” driven by cacoethes, the urge toward the inadvisable. He is especially successful in conveying his transcendent love of the freedom of dance and his rebellion against the snooty strictures of conventional ballet’s efforts to turn him into a “Ken doll forklift.” The short, cacophonous narrative is satisfyingly taut up to the final pages, where it ends with a jarring abruptness just as it takes a dark turn into sexual violence.
While the ending feels rushed, this lively account of youth culture adroitly evokes its time.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68740-400-8
Page Count: 69
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
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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