A readable treatment of a scholarly subject.
A short critique of the letters between the famous James brothers provides an engaging footnote on the relationship and occasional rivalry between two of the finest minds of modern times.
Since academic writing is so often impenetrable, and since philosopher William admitted to being “baffled” by his novelist brother’s writing, one might fear that a study of the siblings from a university press might prove tough sledding. However, this analysis by Hallman (In Utopia, 2010) has a conversational tone that avoids cant. There’s an intimacy here as the brothers criticize each other’s work, engage in gossip and discuss their bowel problems: “Special, and playful attention was reserved for all manner of digestive failure,” as “Henry’s bowels were a perfect training ground for practicing elegant prose that described inelegant events.” Though William was barely a year older than Henry, his “letters often strike a parental tone” toward his younger brother, who “expressed disappointment that their mutual influence did not result in mutual appreciation.” Part of the tension was likely the differing arcs of their careers and influence; while William “inched his way into an academic career, he had watched as his younger brother jetted straight into the heart of the world’s literary elite.” Rather than resolving mysteries such as the sexuality of lifelong bachelor Henry, who “had better relationships with women in his fiction than in real life,” Hallman resists the conclusions to which others have jumped, while also showing that the relationship between the two brothers was closer, and their work more intertwined, than some have suggested. “I believe there exists no other epistolary commingling of minds as complete between figures that have each proven so influential,” writes Hallman.
A readable treatment of a scholarly subject.Pub Date: March 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60938-151-6
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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