Thoughts on Afro-American writers, artists, and sports figures by novelist Forrest (Two Wings to Veil My Face, 1984, etc.), assembled largely from magazines such as The Carleton Miscellany and Callalloo and from book reviews in the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere. Aside from biographical delights about his home in Chicago, Forrest covers the expected territory: Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Billie Holiday, poet Sterling Brown, James Baldwin, Roland Kirk, Jackie Robinson, Faulkner's treatment of blacks, musings on Michael Jordan—and white writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and John Gardner, whose The Art of Fiction he compares with Dostoyevsky's notebooks, James's The Art of the Novel, and Forster's Aspects of the Novel, a comparison that is meaningful only in kind, not in ideas. Forrest's heaviest efforts focus on Faulkner: ``Reinvention is a primary attribute of intelligence, identity, and endurance in the character make-up of many memorable black figures in...The Sound and the Fury: Dilsey, Deacon, Louis Hatcher, and Reverend Shegog. I believe that this major Afro- American cultural attribute—reinvention—was also used by Faulkner as a salient and ironic instrument of structural linkage to reveal the discontinuities and failure of Quentin Compson...and the decline of the South.'' This is lit-crit of a milder sort, not so dense that you can't more or less follow it, and yet it raises the question: Do you want to? We sense that Faulkner himself would not get past the essay's title—``Faulkner/Reforestation.'' A lively interview with Ralph Ellison subjects Ellison to more structural salience, linkage, and ``metaphorical patterning, ``under a viscous dose of Kenneth Burke's ``formula of purpose, passion and perception.'' Some may call it luminous, others windy.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55921-068-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
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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