Meticulously compiled, this is a thought-provoking literary aid.
A far-reaching encyclopedia of literary geography offers valuable insights into the role of place in poetry and prose.
As edited by Houston (Reading Joan Didion, 2009, etc.), this study delivers a comprehensive A-to-Z exploration of more than 100 real and imagined settings across classic and contemporary literature, from Jefferson, Mississippi, in William Faulkner’s novel Absalom! Absalom! to the interior of a single room in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The selections were based on the “most popularly taught selections in high school and college,” and Houston says the book is “ideal for high school classes and introductory college-level courses,” although she believes more advanced students can appreciate its analytical depth. Houston’s introduction answers the question “what is literary geography?” and discusses key spatial theorists and the role of place in poetry and prose. The encyclopedia also features an appendix that elaborates on the literary importance of significant locations, from Paris to England’s Lake District. A detailed bibliography offers valuable recommendations for further reading. The format of each entry is clear and concise, opening with a brief overview of the text, such as: “Jane Eyre is Charlotte Brontë’s short novel about a woman who takes a position as governess at the estate of a wealthy landowner, Edward Rochester.” The entry then zeroes in on the spatial significance of the “British Moors”: “the landscape is also a scary place for Jane growing up because of regional folk tales. Locals tell stories about various ghosts or specters that inhabit the moors.” The tenor of such entries is suitable for high school classes, but more advanced readers may see them as simplistic. Similarly, headings such as the “Cultural Geography of Class Equality” may appear intimidating to some younger students. Houston might have benefited from addressing the encyclopedia to a particular group of students rather than attempting to appeal to all. Still, it’s a testament to the breadth of this book that it examines contemporary titles such as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close alongside The Odyssey, and browsing its pages no doubt will provide a vital springboard to further research.
Meticulously compiled, this is a thought-provoking literary aid.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4408-4254-2
Page Count: 381
Publisher: Greenwood
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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