Unsparing, hate-fueled diatribes serving as an implicit rebuttal of the “kill ’em with kindness” approach.
The controversial performance artist and social commentator indulges in a Trump-bashing frenzy.
Finley (The Reality Shows, 2011, etc.) finds her ultimate target in the current president. This amalgam of creative prose and freestyle poetry floods vitriol on the words and actions of Trump. Like in some of her previous works—e.g. George and Martha, her burlesque of a love affair between George Bush and Martha Stewart—the author attempts to transmogrify a bottomless liberal rage into moving, provocative, and occasionally hilarious art. Most pieces approximate Finley’s real-time experience of watching the debates, the 2016 election, Trump's inauguration and Cabinet appointments, and the seemingly endless scandals besetting American politics, and most chapters feature the author’s stream-of-consciousness conversation with herself. Other sections explore alternative narrative forms and inhabit the voices of key players, including Trump himself, pointedly sinking to his level in a satiric travesty of his political debate foibles that derails into ad hominem attacks and inverted objectifications of the male body, eventually erupting in a lively six-page roster of demeaning euphemisms for the penis (highlights include “Mighty Mouse” and “Dr. Peeper”). Recurring sections inhabit Hillary Clinton’s inner monologue and imaginatively re-create private content like the string of in-house emails (or “emales”) devoted to policing Clinton’s supposed lack of femininity and fashion sense. Finley’s signature shock value registers as rather less extreme in the present media climate, and her comedy elicits little engagement beyond a mirthless laugh at the edge of bitter despair. The poems distinguish themselves from the freestyle prose (just barely) due to their greater reliance on sound and rhythmic intonations of vengeful vituperation. One imagines these pieces playing better at a spoken word slam or a Moth performance than in print, but as with the recent retrospective of her collected works, Finley seems determined to transmit and to get on the record just how much she truly abhors this president and everything he supports.
Unsparing, hate-fueled diatribes serving as an implicit rebuttal of the “kill ’em with kindness” approach.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944869-95-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: OR Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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