An uneven assemblage of memoir and writing advice that will interest devoted readers of Vonnegut’s work.
Seminal views and guidance on writing from Kurt Vonnegut Jr., freely annotated by a former workshop student.
Vonnegut is best remembered for his novels such as Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. However, during a career that spanned more than five decades, he also published several autobiographical essay collections, and much of this writing referenced the writing craft. In this latest posthumous work, a project that was commissioned by the Vonnegut Trust, McConnell—a former Vonnegut student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently a writing instructor and author—has drawn from a hefty assortment of Vonnegut’s writing, including letters, essays, speeches, and lectures, to structure her thematic chapters around Vonnegut’s views on the inspiration, mechanics, and profession of writing. Taken together, the chapters paint an expansive portrait of Vonnegut’s life and career, with examples of how personal experiences often directly contributed to his work. A profound example was his experience as a prisoner of war during the World War II firebombing of Dresden, which he brilliantly recounted in Slaughterhouse-Five. “That event, and others, fueled his writing and shaped his views,” writes McConnell. “(It did not, however, as is often assumed, initiate it. He was already headed in the direction of being a writer when he enlisted.)” Though much of his writing is served up as fragmented bits to support the choppy narrative, for the most part Vonnegut’s practical advice and acerbic humor remain richly articulated. He stresses the need to be entirely passionate about whatever the subject matter is and to bring as much clarity to the writing as possible, which is accomplished mainly through extensive revisions. The downside of McConnell’s approach is that too often her own voice intrudes on Vonnegut’s lessons. In fact, her writing comprises nearly half of the book, and with frequent references to her own opinions on writing and teaching, she stretches her role beyond what would seem appropriate for such an annotated collection.
An uneven assemblage of memoir and writing advice that will interest devoted readers of Vonnegut’s work.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60980-962-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
