by George Steiner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1996
In search of the depths of Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Kafka, and the problematic interplay of Judaism, Classicism, and Christianity, Steiner (Proofs and Three Parables, 1993, etc.) displays his commanding, polymathic erudition. With Yale about to reissue his early Death of Tragedy and other works, this collection of miscellaneous introductions, essays, reviews, and lectures reflects many of Steiner's previous tropes—the ``real presence'' of meaning in literature, the value of tragedy, the traditional and philosophical questions of translation, etc. But No Passion Spent arranges its contents into a cohesive thematic organization that gradually builds on his command of philosophy, literature, and theology. Opening with the Western literary tradition's devaluation of the act of reading (``The Uncommon Reader''), Steiner magisterially reclaims the authority of that tradition, expounding on its biblical, Homeric, and Shakespearean riches. His ``Preface to the Hebrew Bible'' and ``Homer in English'' go through the densely textured record of translations and allusions with striking facility. Steiner considers ``the enigma of revelation in language'' and the West's troubled moral history, focusing particularly on the Holocaust. Sometimes his intellect overreaches itself, as in an equivocal logical-positivist reading of Shakespeare and elitist presumptions about America; but it is always in pursuit of demanding questions, such as the significance of cultural inheritance or the mutual rejections of Christianity and Judaism. The volume concludes at an illuminating zenith with a pair of essays, ``Two Cocks'' and ``Two Suppers,'' in which Steiner turns his incisive mind to the parallels of the deaths of Socrates and Jesus, the Last Supper and the Symposium. With such stimulating scope and compelling concerns, it's fitting that Steiner's title reworks a quote from that Puritan Classicist Milton's Samson Agonistes, drawing strength and passion from all the traditions it invokes.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-300-06630-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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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by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
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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by David Hajdu ; illustrated by John Carey
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