In this display case, auriferous observations about literature lie alongside some substantial chunks of fool’s gold.
A disjunctive memoir cum meditation on Gotham.
Tytell (English/Queens College; Paradise Outlaws, 1999, etc.) focuses on writers who lived in New York, from Henry James to the Beats, but intercuts scenes from his own life, not always to the desired effect. The early pages are appealing. The author describes boyhood eye problems that made reading difficult (cortisone eventually cured what numerous surgeries did not) and relates how his imagination was fired by Herman Melville’s fiction, especially “Billy Budd” and Typee. Relying heavily on Herschel Parker’s monumental biography, Tytell chronicles Melville’s decline from a popular writer of travel books to an unknown customs inspector who cranked out thousands of obscure lines in his massive pilgrimage poem, Clarel (Tytell’s vagueness about this work suggests he has not read it). The author is a bit dismissive of such Melville peers as Nathaniel Hawthorne (“cold and analytical”) and Washington Irving (a “local colorist”). Among the other literary figures whose lives and writings he examines closely are Edgar Poe, Walt Whitman, Henrys Miller and James. (Oddly, Tytell declares factual the highly debatable story that Poe died in Baltimore after selling his vote in assorted precincts.) Into all of this he weaves family history—his grandfather, a diamond trader, expected the author to be the same—as well as memories of his childhood, adolescence, education, love affairs, first apartments and part-time jobs. Tytell obviously loves literature and his city, but he’s also exceedingly fond of himself. He makes sure to let us know that he is often the brightest light in the room, cataloguing high-school grades and undergraduate honors, and he tells us more than we want to know about his sexual performance with beautiful women. Equally unwelcome is the nasty intelligence that while working in a restaurant Tytell once urinated in the drink of an offensive customer.
In this display case, auriferous observations about literature lie alongside some substantial chunks of fool’s gold.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41416-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
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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