A fusty, indignant report—dated 1983—from Tibet by Harrer (Seven Years in Tibet, not reviewed), the now-celebrated adventurer who briefly returned to his “second home” 30 years after fleeing China’s invasion. In 1945 the Austrian author escaped from a British prisoner-of-war camp, hoofed it over the Trans-Himalayan range, and eventually arrived in Lhasa, capitol of Tibet. There he found what he took to be an idyll: a sublime mix of Tibetan Buddhism, ancient customs, and dust-free air that made landscape colors incandescent. He became an important figure in the country—chief engineer, tutor of the Dalai Lama—but left as the Chinese commenced their occupation. In 1982 he was able to revisit Tibet during the “Chinese-staged thaw,” and he was by turns heartbroken and inspired by what he observed: Valuable cultural treasures had been destroyed by the invaders, and stories of concentration camps, forced labor, and political murders sent him reeling. Yet the country’s religion was still strong, and there continued both armed resistance to the Chinese and an unquashable national will. His two sojourns in the country make for some intriguing before-and-after comparisons, and his comments on particulars of Tibetan Buddhism are revealing. But the tone of the book is dryly nostalgic, when not bitter, and Harrer’s opinions sometimes seem jarringly contradictory. He rails against what the Chinese have done to the country—razing monasteries, imprisoning and killing nationals—and then inexplicably suggests that China and Tibet might be well served by a partnership, with Tibet happily becoming “part of that enormous yellow state.” Moreover, every so often he lets the feudalist in him shine through unforgivably in making unfortunate remarks on his longing for a land “where superstition would be the poetry of life.” The insights are worth the cover price anyhow, despite the author’s occasional reactionary comments and his priggishness.
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-87477-925-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
An extraordinary portrait of a remarkable Englishwoman, a musical era, and a time gone by. The many for whom Violet Gordon Woodhouse is not a household name should read this book. A child prodigy on the piano, Woodhouse did for early music in the first half of this century what Sir Neville Mariner has done for it in the last 20 years. A harpsichordist and clavichordist of prodigious abilities, she made the performance of early composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Scarlatti her personal musical mission. Which is not to suggest that Woodhouse was some nerdy stick-in-the-mud. She was, in fact, a woman so enchanting that she convinced her husband to marry her even though she made it clear they would never have children or, for that matter, sex. She also managed to get this lovestruck soul (whom she did also love, by the way) to agree not long after their marriage to allow three other men equally besotted with her to live with them. It was an arrangement that continued, except for an interruption occasioned by WW I, for the rest of their lives. Woodhouse was equally bewitching to the female sex, serving as the love interest of a number of women, the most notable of whom were the composer Ethel Smyth and the novelist Radclyffe Hall. In between these romantic interludes, Woodhouse made the first recordings of harpsichord music, played with such luminaries as the cellist Pablo Casals, hosted salons whose guests included Picasso, Ezra Pound, and the Sitwells, and snagged the family inheritance after the butler murdered two spinster sisters to whom her father had left his millions. Deftly written by Douglas-Home, Woodhouse's great-niece and a painter, this book has all the makings of a Masterpiece Theatre hit. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1997
ISBN: 1-86046-269-3
Page Count: 342
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
``Lady vampires demand their own blood bank!'' Not one to let shame get in the way of compiling a funny book, Waldoks (co-editor, The Big Book of Jewish Humor, not reviewed) even looks at the front page of the Weekly World News, the tabloid of tabloids, from which he pulled the above headline. Also in the ``Miscellaneous'' section of mostly found humor are headlines from real newspapers (``Prostitutes appeal to pope''; ``Survivor of Siamese twins joins parents'') and a gag about not putting ``Descartes before the horse.'' Waldoks has also collected articles and essays by the likes of Emily Prager, Stanley Bing, and Douglas Coupland; sketches and short fiction from folks as diverse as Garrison Keillor and Karen Finley, the two of whom surely never expected to find themselves together between the covers (of the same book); and excerpts from longer works by Philip Roth, Andrei Codrescu, and others. Funny stuff, in all shapes and sizes, some of it cornball camp and some of it sophisticated.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-89940-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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