Appreciative essays on Japanese aesthetics and mores, delivered with sumi-like grace and delicacy. Elder (English/Middlebury; co-ed., The Norton Book of Nature Writing—not reviewed) makes good use of his sabbatical in Japan: He and his family settle into a traditional Kyoto neighborhood; he takes shodo (calligraphy) and Go lessons; his children attend a Japanese elementary school and learn kendo (swordsmanship) and nanga (watercoloring) after-hours. This blanket immersion in the culture affords Elder a ``richly marginal year'' in which he tastes Japanese life in a way closed to most visitors. For him, traditional Japan is a set of practices ``centered on doing and looking'': His painting teacher proceeds by example, without explanations; education is an unusual brew of rote memory and freedom to experiment, with children breaking into small groups at will to try out ideas planted by the teacher. Go class and contacts with Noh theater reveal to the author Japan's highly articulated gender roles, in which men speak in gruff monosyllables and women chirp and smile. This extreme cultivation marks Japan's approach to nature (``enfolding nature within history and culture''), which Elder explores through discussions of the Japanese spring, wilderness, and whale-hunting. His attempts to analyze Japanese psychology seem right on target, as in his observation that ``eating whales may actually typify the pleasure of rendering the vast and fearsome small,'' or that the ugliness of modern Japanese architecture stems from the nation's emphasis on interiority. Comparisons to America come frequently, without the believe-it-or- not tone of Edwin Reingold's Chrysanthemums and Thorns (p. 1241); instead, Elder substitutes a quiet admiration, and a hope that the American ideal of untamed wilderness and the Japanese ideal of humanized nature may somehow merge to the benefit of both. Balanced, gentle, meditative: an unusual find in today's books on Japan.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-8070-5906-4
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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