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SOUTH TOWARD HOME

Name: SOUTH TOWARD HOME
Author: Margaret Eby
ISBN: 978-0-393-24111-2

TRAVELS IN SOUTHERN LITERATURE

by Margaret Eby ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 2015

Eby brings fine sensibility to her readings of all her subjects’ works and, in polished prose, offers a fresh look at their...

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Seeking the heart of Southern writing.

Essayist and journalist Eby (Rock and Roll Baby Names: Over 2,000 Music-Inspired Names, from Alison to Ziggy, 2012) pays homage to 10 Southern writers in this illuminating journey to the homes, towns, and landscapes that nurtured them. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, the author came to understand her identity as a Southerner by reading Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, and, of course, William Faulkner. Besides these usual suspects, she includes the “harsh and haunting” Harry Crews, memoirist Richard Wright, Lee’s irascible friend Truman Capote, and fiction writers Barry Hannah, John Kennedy Toole, and Larry Brown. Eby embarked on this odyssey, she writes, “to see the places they had lived in and written about, to breathe the same air, to hear the same accents and meet the same people.” Many homes have been preserved for visitors. Being in Welty’s, Eby reports, feels “like dropping into one of her stories.” At O’Connor’s Andalusia Farm in Milledgevile, Eby imagined her surrounded by her peacocks, writing in a “small, almost monastic” room with a single bed and plain wooden desk. Both Welty and O’Connor felt cowed by Faulkner’s reputation. He was like “a big mountain, something majestic,” Welty said. “I keep clear of Faulkner so my own little boat won’t get swamped,” O’Connor told a friend. Visiting Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi, Eby particularly noted his bookshelves, “custom made to store his shotgun shells along the sides,” and his liquor cabinet, replete with bottles of whiskey. She also traveled to Monroeville, a town that finds myriad ways to celebrate Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. She traces Crews’ painful childhood in Bacon County, Georgia, and sensitively evokes Toole’s New Orleans as well as his posthumous novel, A Confederacy of Dunces.

Eby brings fine sensibility to her readings of all her subjects’ works and, in polished prose, offers a fresh look at their lives and literary legacies.

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-393-24111-2

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 12, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- PROFILES
Margaret Eby

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.