It's a truism that writers, like musicians, must practice their scales before they take flight. Are the practice lessons themselves of any literary value? Rarely, judging from these two volumes, other than as scholarly footnotes—although Jane Austen's The History of England, composed in 1791, when the future author of Pride and Prejudice was only 16, proves a happy exception. Though the 60-page manuscript has appeared previously in Austen collections (most recently in Oxford University Press's Catharine and Other Writings, 1993), it's never before been published in facsimile—an important point since Austen's handwritten manuscript was accompanied by profuse color portraits drawn by the writer's older sister, Cassandra, reproduced here. Intended to burlesque Oliver Goldsmith's wildly popular, four-volume The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II, Austen's little book, as A.S. Byatt points out in an introduction, displays ``an unusual mixture of lively energy and gleefully confident control''—as witnessed by this opening sentence to Austen's brief life of Henry V: ``This Prince after he succeeded to the throne/grew quite reformed and amiable, forsaking all his dissipated Companions, & never thrashing Sir William again.'' That sort of dry, sophisticated wit abounds throughout, making this an esoteric pleasure. Generally less involving are most of the bits of juvenilia excavated by Paul Mandelbaum, a freelance journalist, in First Words. Arranged alphabetically by their 42 authors, from Isaac Asimov to Tobias Wolff, the entries include such items as Jill McCorkle's short-short ``The Night Santa Failed to Come,'' written when she was seven; eight-year-old Amy Tan's essay, ``What the Library Means to Me,'' and—far more polished—a long mystery story (``Untitled Mystery'') from 14-year-old John Updike. The collection makes clear that, even when very young, many writers work with ideas that will hallmark their adult work (e.g., Stephen King at age nine writing in ``Jhonathan and the Witchs'' [sic] of a quest confounded by supernatural evil), and Mandelbaum does an energetic job of pointing out, in introductions and sidebars, thematic relations between each author's older and newer writings—though his comments do sometimes sound almost tongue-in-cheek: ``The childhood piece that follows is precocious in its prose and is an early foray in [the author's] ongoing exploration of masculine terrain but doesn't quite anticipate his roles as literary philosopher and cultural provocateur''—this pronouncement applied to ten-year-old Norman Mailer's ``adventure epic,'' ``The Martian Invasion.'' Still, Mandelbaum's collection has a certain novelty interest and, for manic completists, it no doubt will prove a must.
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1993
ISBN: 1-56512-055-8
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An informed and gloomy appraisal of the prospects for democracy in Russia from the longtime Moscow corespondent of the (Manchester) Guardian, who concludes that the present political system may be one of the many revolutions from above in Russian history that end in failure. Steele (Andropov in Power, 1983, etc.) derives his conclusion both from Russian history and from his own experiences as a correspondent. He makes the telling observation that, when Yeltsin stood on a tank to proclaim his resistance to the attempted coup in 1991, the crowd that applauded him was fewer than 200 in number; only when the coup was safely over did huge crowds emerge. The coup failed, Steele says, not because of mass resistance but because the plotters lost their nerve and the Army commanders split. Nor is he impressed by the ability of Russians to run a democratic system. Yeltsin's contempt for the Supreme Soviet—the majority of which originally supported him—was such that he refused for almost a year to appear before it or to meet with its leaders. He believes that Yeltsin deliberately provoked the hard-line faction in the Parliament into an injudicious response, which gave him an excuse to use the Army. Yeltsin also manipulated the constitutional referendum held at the same time as the election in 1993 to prevent opposition to its approval and to increase his own power. Steele's conclusions are not entirely pessimistic: He believes that considerable freedom has already been established and that the gains that have been made cannot be entirely reversed. Overall, however, he sees Russia as a ``society without law'' and he questions whether the country will not take ``a long time to evolve towards genuine democracy, if ever.'' Steele is better on contemporary events than on history, and better on politics than on society at large, but his deep knowledge of Russia over the last three decades gives his conclusions great and worrisome authority.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-674-26837-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
In his first nonfiction work, noted Native American novelist Welch (The Indian Lawyer, 1990, etc.) stretches the boundaries of history. With the research assistance of Stekler, Welch offers a sweeping history of the American West based on work the pair did for their 1992 PBS documentary, The Last Stand. Though centered on the Battle of the Little Big Horn, in which warriors led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeated Custer's 7th Cavalry, the volume actually chronicles white/Indian contact and conflict from the voyage of Lewis and Clark in 1804 to the present—from the viewpoint of the Indians. Welch begins by describing the 1869 massacre of a band of his own Blackfeet people and his efforts to locate the forgotten site of the carnage. He then moves on to the story of Custer, a Civil War hero who was demoted following the war and sent to fight Indians on the Western frontier. His conduct at the Washita Massacre, during which he and his men wiped out Black Kettle's peaceful Cheyenne, called his abilities into question and demonstrated the character and leadership flaws that would help bring about his death eight years later. Brash, cavalier, and supremely confident, Custer embodied America's larger self-image. His death, in the worst military disaster of the Indian Wars, thus assumed mythic proportions, aided by a relentless publicity campaign by his widow. Welch traces the fates of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull following the famous battle and uses accounts of such other engagements as Sand Creek and the Fetterman Massacre to help put Little Big Horn in historical perspective. A late chapter personalizes the text, as Welch tells the story of his mother and his early desire to become a writer. An excellent Native version of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: a sad tale that, despite momentary triumphs like Little Big Horn, could not but end tragically for the Indians. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 24, 1994
ISBN: 0-393-03657-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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