"Jehan Stynebec" maintained a lifelong devotion to the 15th-century minor hoodlum and "knyght presoner, sir Thomas Malleorre," and long cherished the idea of retelling the Matter of Arthur for our time. Dating mostly from 1958-59, Steinbeck's fragmentary attempt represents both an earnest effort at scholarly perspective and a broad contemporary reinterpretation. He did not try to "translate," but simplified and condensed Malory's language while tidying up some narrative loose ends. There are five brief, fairly straightforward versions of episodes from the first book (following Eugene Vinaver's edition of the Winchester MS) and two lengthy narratives based on the Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake and the Gawain, Ywain, and Marhalt episode. The brief pieces are usually best when closest to Malory; the fog-over-the-moors flourishes and frequent sententious interpolations rarely come off. And Malory's blunt, clear prose rhythms find little counterpart in Steinbeck: "And only then did the knights look about them. On a smooth dark water they saw a little ship covered with silken cloth. . ." for "Than the kynge loked aboute the worlde and sawe before hym in a grete water a lytyll shippe all apparayled with sylke downe to the watir." The two long pieces are freewheeling, often playful reworkings of Malory, in which Steinbeck tries to sum up his complex love of all that knighthood and the Arthurian fellowship have meant to him. Here the dominant mode is the arch and whimsical fable, much in the vein of Pippin IV, bound to enthrall and exasperate equal numbers of people. The book must be evaluated more as Steinbeckiana than as Arthuriana, not so much for its narrative foibles as because the project remained so fragmentary—including neither the Grail quest, the book of Launcelot and Guinevere, nor the Morte Arthur. A complete Arthurian cycle from Steinbeck would have been good to have. The present version remains an erratically charming curiosity.
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1976
ISBN: 0143105450
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1976
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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