An absolute tour de force and a must-read for any aspiring artist.
A Canadian jade sculptor recalls his life and work in this remarkable memoir by Sopel (Sopel: Alluring Presence, 2012).
There is a perceived esotericism surrounding the art of sculpture, particularly when it comes to gemstones. How did the sculptor go about acquiring the precious material? How did the artist “see” the finished work in the mother rock? In this memoir, Sopel, whose work is owned by the Aga Khan and the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, among others, explains his artistic practice and the journey that led him to become a world-class artist. The memoir opens at high octane, recalling the moment when Sopel jumped from a helicopter into a remote location in British Columbia. After discovering the jade mine he was searching for, he was immediately confronted by its owner and his shotgun. Attitudes changed when he revealed his identity as a jade sculptor from Vancouver. This dramatic opening sets the effervescent, enthralling tone for the memoir, which examines Sopel’s early life and a battle with dyslexia, his gravitation toward artistic practices, his time in art school, and the events that motivated him to progress from being an artist sold in high-end tourist shops to one sold in very high-end galleries. This is a richly textured account—Sopel explored Europe as a young man and also traveled to Asia following his success. Moreover, this is a wonderfully forthright examination of what it means to be an artist. Sopel succinctly describes his connection with his work, in this instance, his sculpture of a Buddha: “You know how it is when you first fall in love? How it’s utter joy just to see that person, just to be with them? They don’t have to do anything; they don’t have to be anything other than what they are. You just feel that love for them.” It must also be noted that working on the Buddha almost killed him. Sopel’s dedication to his art is palpable, and his direct, no-nonsense approach to writing proves inspirational: “Being an artist isn’t an excuse for being poor, or laid back, or stoned. Being an artist is never an excuse for anything. An artist makes art. Period.” Written with the transparent desire to encourage others to “celebrate their own nonverbal strengths,” this is surely one of the most motivating, surprising, and utterly endearing memoirs written by a contemporary artist.
An absolute tour de force and a must-read for any aspiring artist.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-989161-00-5
Page Count: 231
Publisher: Hasmark Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.
A New York Times columnist and editorial board member delivers a slim book for aspiring writers, offering saws and sense, wisdom and waggery, biases and biting sarcasm.
Klinkenborg (Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile, 2006), who’s taught for decades, endeavors to keep things simple in his prose, and he urges other writers to do the same. (Note: He despises abuses of the word as, as he continually reminds readers.) In the early sections, the author ignores traditional paragraphing so that the text resembles a long free-verse poem. He urges readers to use short, clear sentences and to make sure each one is healthy before moving on; notes that it’s acceptable to start sentences with and and but; sees benefits in diagramming sentences; stresses that all writing is revision; periodically blasts the formulaic writing that many (most?) students learn in school; argues that knowing where you’re headed before you begin might be good for a vacation, but not for a piece of writing; and believes that writers must trust readers more, and trust themselves. Most of Klinkenborg’s advice is neither radical nor especially profound (“Turn to the poets. / Learn from them”), and the text suffers from a corrosive fallacy: that if his strategies work for him they will work for all. The final fifth of the text includes some passages from writers he admires (McPhee, Oates, Cheever) and some of his students’ awkward sentences, which he treats analytically but sometimes with a surprising sarcasm that veers near meanness. He includes examples of students’ dangling modifiers, malapropisms, errors of pronoun agreement, wordiness and other mistakes.
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-26634-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Making movies may be ``hard work,'' as the veteran director continually reminds us throughout this slight volume, but Lumet's simple-minded writing doesn't make much of a case for that or for anything else. Casual to a fault and full of movie-reviewer clichÇs, Lumet's breezy how-to will be of little interest to serious film students, who will find his observations obvious and silly (``Acting is active, it's doing. Acting is a verb''). Lumet purports to take readers through the process of making a movie, from concept to theatrical release—and then proceeds to share such trade secrets as his predilection for bagels and coffee before heading out to a set and his obsessive dislike for teamsters. Lumet's vigorously anti-auteurist aesthetic suits his spotty career, though his handful of good movies (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City, and Q&A) seem to have quite a lot in common visually and thematically as gutsy urban melodramas. Lumet's roots in the theater are obvious in many of his script choices, from Long Day's Journey into Night to Child's Play, Equus, and Deathtrap. ``I love actors,'' he declares, but don't expect any gossip, just sloppy kisses to Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and ``Betty'' Bacall. Lumet venerates his colleague from the so-called Golden Age of TV, Paddy Chayevsky, who scripted Lumet's message-heavy Network. Style, Lumet avers, is ``the way you tell a particular story''; and the secret to critical and commercial success? ``No one really knows.'' The ending of this book, full of empty praise for his fellow artists, reads like a dry run for an Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, the standard way of honoring a multi-Oscar loser. There's a pugnacious Lumet lurking between the lines of this otherwise smarmy book, and that Lumet just might write a good one someday.
Pub Date: March 27, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43709-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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