There are only occasional insights in this frenzied, unabashedly self-indulgent book.
Recounting a literary obsession.
When Hallman (Wm & H’ry: Literature, Love, and the Letters Between William and Henry James, 2013, etc.) first proposed writing a book about Nicholson Baker, emulating Baker’s book about John Updike, U and I, Hallman’s agent was discouraging about its “possible commercial value.” So Hallman fired him and found a new agent who sold the proposal, setting him on a quest to indulge in his passion. Baker writes lustily about sex, giving Hallman a chance to do so, as well, which seems to be his real aim. He ruminates about masturbating, offers clinical details of his lovemaking, describes fondling his girlfriend’s breasts, and excitedly shares information about the frequency and quality of her orgasms, which, he notes, “had become more and more intense, had grown by orders of magnitude, and now, seismically speaking, they were eruptive, volcanic orgasms…of roof joist-shattering intensity.” Other bodily functions (urinating, defecating) and parts (penises, anuses) also merit the author’s consideration. Readers unfamiliar with Baker’s writing may have a difficult time engaging in Hallman’s fixation, his quandary about how to proceed (should he meet him?) and his detailed analysis of his works. Reading Baker, he discovered, “seemed like the perfect tool to use to poke a hole in the dike of my imagination” (phallic imagery abounds throughout), and writing about him was even more inspiring. He felt “a renewed sense of purpose” and saw Baker as his “savior.” When the two finally met, Hallman realized that he was never going to be “a simple friend” to the man he had made his literary subject. “Nicholson Baker need not be a savior for anyone other than me,” Hallman remarks, though he urges readers “to find their Nicholson Baker,” a writer who liberates their imaginations and enriches their worlds.
There are only occasional insights in this frenzied, unabashedly self-indulgent book.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1451682007
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
