A practical, nonboring companion for writers aiming to hone their style.
A self-described "language enthusiast" analyzes memorable sentences.
Woods, author of English Grammar for Dummies, among dozens of other books on writing and literature, offers an upbeat, informative guide for writers and readers, focused on the power of sentences. Each of the 25 chapters highlights one exemplary sentence, supplemented by many others that illustrate the same technique, drawn from a capacious range of sources, including Virginia Woolf, Stephen King, Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, the King James Bible, and even ads for potato chips, candy, and soda. Woods avoids literary jargon and carefully explains terms that might be unfamiliar to nonspecialist readers. Looking at structure, for example, she identifies several interesting constructions—parallelism, reversed sentences, questions, for example—and “crossed sentences,” which she calls “the neon signs of the sentence world. They attract attention.” Her primary example is John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” and she also cites Groucho Marx: “Money will not make you happy, and happy will not make you money.” Some sentences, notes the author, succeed through surprise, such as Lucille Ball’s “The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” A section on diction examines verbs, tone, word shifts (Gertrude Stein’s “There is no there there” is one example), and inventive coinage. Poetry appears most frequently in chapters on sound (onomatopoeia, repetition, and matching sounds) and visual presentation. A section on connection/comparison analyzes use of the first person and second person, synesthesia, and contrast—e.g., Neil Armstrong’s famous “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” A final section on “Extremes” focuses on unusually long “marathon sentences” and sentences that are marvels of concision, such as E.M. Forster’s “Only connect.” Each chapter ends with inventive writing exercises.
A practical, nonboring companion for writers aiming to hone their style.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00485-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
An overdue upending of art historical discourse.
An indispensable primer on the history of art, with an exclusive focus on women.
Prominent 19th-century art critic John Ruskin once proclaimed, “the woman’s intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision,” and traces of this misguided and malignant sentiment can still be found over a century later in art institutions around the world. A 2019 study found that “in the collections of eighteen major US art museums, 87 percent of artworks were by men, and 85 percent by white artists.” There’s a lot to be mad about, but London-based art historian Hessel nimbly pivots that energy into a constructive, revelatory project. This book is not a mere rebuttal to the aforementioned discrimination; deftly researched, the text reveals an alternate history of centuries of artistic movements. With palpable excitement, the author shifts the focus from widely known male participants to the unsung female players of the time. Art aficionados will delight in Hessel’s sleight of hand and marvel at her wide, inclusive reach. Spanning from Baroque art to the present day, she effortlessly removes “the clamour of men” and, in a series of short biographical profiles, shapes a historical arc that still feels grounded even without a familiar male presence. Art history must “reset,” Hessel writes, and she positions her book as an important first step in that reconfiguration. While the author progresses mostly movement by movement, her broader tangents are particularly profound. One of many highlights is a generous overview of queer artists of the Weimar era. Hessel is occasionally uneven with how much content she allots each artist, and some perfunctory profiles feel like the result of trying to highlight as many names as possible. Nonetheless, even the shortest gloss provides enough intrigue to be a successful introduction to an artist who might otherwise be forgotten.
An overdue upending of art historical discourse.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780393881868
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
A thoughtful meditation on a celebrated poet’s reasons for writing.
The former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner reflects on how geography and history shaped her creative career.
Trethewey’s earliest memories take place inside her grandmother’s “shotgun house” outside of Gulfport, Mississippi. Later, the author would learn that her birthplace was located on Highway 49, “a legendary highway of the Blues,” and that her birthday was on “the hundredth anniversary of Confederate Memorial Day.” These literal and metaphorical intersections deeply influenced Trethewey’s life by inspiring her to study her grandmother’s Black vernacular (“the language that connected us across time and space”), her awareness of the ways in which America systematically erases Black history and culture, and her obsession with permanently inscribing her mother’s existence—and her untimely death—into the historical record. “To have dominion over oneself, to be the sovereign of the nation of self, one must be the writer of the story,” she writes. By the end of this brief text, part of the publisher’s Why I Write series, Trethewey concludes that for her, “the language of poetry creates a space for what I’ve lost to carry on, a momentary stay against the inevitable.” It is this recovery of losses—e.g., family memories of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross across the street from her grandmother’s house, the contributions of Black soldiers to the Union’s victory in the Civil War, the upkeep of her mother’s gravesite—that has driven the author’s storied career for decades. In this lyrical, thoughtful volume, Trethewey not only makes surprising, insightful connections between personal and national history; she also paints a profound portrait of unresolvable grief. Though it adheres to the series format, the text feels like a long-form essay. While a satisfying read, many of the narrative’s nuanced but neat conclusions could merit more exploration.
A thoughtful meditation on a celebrated poet’s reasons for writing.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780300265927
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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