A dive into reams of primary source materials reveals a “new” Cavafy.
A quirky, revelatory biography of the celebrated Greek poet.
The co-authors, who have written a number of books about Constantine Cavafy, organize their biography in five parts in order to focus on certain key topics in his life. They begin at the end, with his death from throat cancer in 1933, “then tell a circular narrative through various thematic sequences.” First up is the wealthy Cavafy family, which traveled often. Time spent in England “would shape [Constantine’s] social, cultural, and literary tastes.” Their move to Istanbul allowed him to widen his knowledge and interests, including his sexual orientation. Cosmopolitan Alexandria was for Constantine a “beloved” city of “infinite expansion” where he would work for 30 years as a petty civil clerk at the Department of Irrigation. The authors envision Cavafy in his book- and candle-laden apartment, walking around, visiting churches, museums, and bookstores, and traveling to the coast—places that provided inspiration for his poems. His friendships fell into three categories: pleasure, virtue, and advantage. The authors discuss his relationship with his friend E.M. Forster, who championed Cavafy’s poetry in England. In an “Interlude,” they explore Cavafy’s extensive reading. Many books dealt with history and the major Greek and French writers, while Shakespeare looms large alongside Keats, Homer, Dante, Poe, and Tennyson. But “poetry would become his life and he would live for poetry.” At first he dabbled in journalism, but poetry won out, publishing his first in 1886, “The Poet and the Muse.” He experimented with how to write about homoerotic sexuality and relished delving into rhyme, rhythm, meter, and punctuation. The authors conclude by discussing one of Cavafy’s most intriguing traits, his obsessive, self-confident need to be read and known (often giving away copies of his “terse, disciplined verse”), coupled with his “crippling self-doubt.”
A dive into reams of primary source materials reveals a “new” Cavafy.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780374610425
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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