Solipsism, as much as skillfulness, is what the contributors to this year's collection seem to have most in common. ``A good essay for me is an essay that pleases me,'' guest editor Kincaid (Lucy, 1990, etc.) declares in her introduction, setting the pace for the overweening, self-indulgent egos that parade through the rest of the volume, coedited by series editor Atwan. The title of William H. Gass's otherwise murky essay clearly states their overarching theme: ``The Art of Self.'' The problem is not this time-honored topic, of course. Rather, it is the excessive narcissism that many of these authors exhibit, whether explicitly discussing themselves or just drifting from some other subject into navel-gazing. We expect nothing else from Harold Brodkey, whose first dispatch from his struggle with AIDS appears here. Maxine Kumin disappoints, however, with a celebration of vegetable gardening that fairly oozes self-satisfaction. Most egregious is Edward Hoagland's apologia for his adulteries, which masquerades as an elegy for his late wife. Some of the autobiographical pieces do manage to avoid blithe egocentrism. Tobias Wolff and Henry Louis Gates Jr., elaborating their already well-known midlife memoirs, keep the focus on their families and friends. Grace Paley sketches the women whom she met when she spent a week in a Greenwich Village jail for protesting the Vietnam war. Fine efforts come from Joseph Brodsky and Elaine Scarry: Brodsky's record of his ongoing fascination with the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius shows him confronting, rather than simply emulating, a prototypical imperial self, while Scarry argues persuasively that the ends of centuries bring a heightening of poetic consciousness. On the evidence of this inconsistent tenth volume, however, such vaunted fin-de-siäcle magic seems to be failing for essays.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-395-69184-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
An elegantly idiosyncratic, leisurely and—at its most successful—revealing stroll through London's highways and byways that transcends the coffee-table genre. A long-time art critic for the the New York Times, British- born Russell is an erudite guide to the city he made his home for over 50 years (if one at times rather too fond of the sound of his own voice). He takes the reader on a wholly personal, unsystematic, yet surprisingly thorough ramble through London's long history and its labyrinthine social topographies as well as its protean physical aspect. Though he occasionally lapses into travelogue bromides (``there is no better school of life than the streets of a great city''), more often Russell succeeds in finding neglected perspectives that help us reimagine a city made overfamiliar by mass tourism and media: a history of London's 19th-century salon culture, an explanation of what goes on behind the closed doors of the city through a history of its architecture, and, throughout, a refreshing emphasis on London as the living and working home of millions of ordinary folk rather than a picturesque museum. Having come to know the city in its imperial twilight, Russell does sometimes fall prey to nostalgic Edwardianisms (for instance, in his rose-tinted and pompous descriptions of Parliament); but at his best he combines the historian's long view, the aesthete's appreciative gaze, and the social critic's inquiring eye to paint a bracingly complex picture of a city whose heritage continues to evolve—such as his account of the Docklands transformation from commercial and imperial hub to the sometimes combustible social laboratory of the new London. At its unstuffy best, Russell's ``tour'' is brought to vivid life by his unfailingly apposite selection of paintings, engravings, architects' drawings and photographs, in general excellently reproduced (though on occasion large-scale images have been reduced beyond comfortable scrutiny). Russell for the most part offers the armchair traveler and the inquiring mind alike five-star service. (183 illustrations, 86 in color) (Book-of-the-Month Club dividend selection)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8109-3570-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lively enough, in contradistinction to its subject, this workmanlike volume of literary history traces the underexamined phenomenon of boredom. Boredom, Spacks (Gossip, 1985; English/Univ. of Virginia) informs us, is a social construction of recent vintage. The figure of ``the bore'' first appeared in the mid-18th century; the idea of boredom emerged, like the novel, in the wake of early modernity's development of the concept of leisure. Boredom and popular writing have intimate links: Writers seek above all to be interesting (i.e., not boring), and readers follow their interests in reading, evading boredom. Not coincidentally, boredom has long fascinated popular writers as a subject. Spacks builds on these observations in developing her history of boredom in English literature. Reconsidering narration as a strategy for reclaiming life from boredom, she discusses how a wide variety of 18th-century fiction and correspondence treats that state of mind. Her investigation reveals that boredom often masks more pointed discomforts, even serving as a subtle form of aggression against resented environments. A look at how Jane Austen disciplines her title character in Emma provides a case study in what Spacks calls ``the normalization of boredom.'' As sociology has charted the spread of boredom through society, writers have continued to explore the implications of its pervasiveness and to mount resistances to it. In her final chapters, Spacks considers boredom in the context of works by such authors as Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Donald Barthelme, and Anita Brookner. However, the interest/boredom opposition, always fairly crude, seems especially inadequate for describing modern fiction, with its self-consciously alienating effects. Her discussion also lacks a real reckoning with the entertainment marketplace's appeals to (and cultivation of) boredom in the consumers of its stimulations. Nevertheless, Spacks opens up promising ground for further investigations. Perhaps a new academic subdiscipline might be in order: Anyone for Boredom Studies?
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-226-76853-8
Page Count: 289
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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