An indispensable volume for fans of Vargas Llosa, Latin American literature, and the art of great writing.
Conversations on politics and writing with the 2010 Nobel laureate in literature.
After he joined the Princeton faculty in 2002, Gallo met Mario Vargas Llosa (b. 1936) when the latter spoke at the university about his essay on Les Misérables. When Gallo then became director of the Latin American studies program, he invited Vargas Llosa to spend several semesters teaching there. Gallo has since gone through 50 hours of recordings and notes on the seminars he and Vargas Llosa conducted and has collected that information in this magnificent book. In the first chapters, Vargas Llosa discusses “the effect of the great political events of the twentieth century on literature,” followed by his thoughts on the role of journalism in his maturity as a writer. The bulk of the book consists of long discussions of five Vargas Llosa works: the novels Conversation in the Cathedral, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, and The Feast of the Goat; and A Fish in the Water, a hybrid that chronicles Vargas Llosa’s 1990 presidential campaign in his native Peru and a memoir of his youth. The book concludes with a spirited discussion on “the role of the intellectual in the face of the ever more real threat of terrorism.” Many thoughtful questions from Gallo and his students elicit provocative answers on an appealing variety of topics, including the perniciousness of dictatorships, the scourge and popularity of yellow journalism (“there is public pressure for journalism to also be entertainment”), and Vargas Llosa’s approach to writing (he uses “hidden details” that “hide the story’s main event,” a technique he learned from reading Hemingway). The result is a treasure trove of literary advice and political analysis. Vargas Llosa also offers relevant warnings on the ways in which democratic societies can corrode into authoritarianism, as when he notes the ease with which “truths become lies, and lies become truths.”
An indispensable volume for fans of Vargas Llosa, Latin American literature, and the art of great writing.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-374-12901-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.
The acclaimed director displays his talents as a film critic.
Tarantino’s collection of essays about the important movies of his formative years is packed with everything needed for a powerful review: facts about the work, context about the creative decisions, and whether or not it was successful. The Oscar-winning director of classic films like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs offers plenty of attitude with his thoughts on movies ranging from Animal House to Bullitt to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Big Chill. Whether you agree with his assessments or not, he provides the original reporting and insights only a veteran director would notice, and his engaging style makes it impossible to leave an essay without learning something. The concepts he smashes together in two sentences about Taxi Driver would take a semester of film theory class to unpack. Taxi Driver isn’t a “paraphrased remake” of The Searchers like Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? is a paraphrased remake of Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby or De Palma’s Dressed To Kill is a paraphrased remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho. But it’s about as close as you can get to a paraphrased remake without actually being one. Robert De Niro’s taxi driving protagonist Travis Bickle is John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards. Like any good critic, Tarantino reveals bits of himself as he discusses the films that are important to him, recalling where he was when he first saw them and what the crowd was like. Perhaps not surprisingly, the author was raised by movie-loving parents who took him along to watch whatever they were watching, even if it included violent or sexual imagery. At the age of 8, he had seen the very adult MASH three times. Suddenly the dark humor of Kill Bill makes much more sense. With this collection, Tarantino offers well-researched love letters to his favorite movies of one of Hollywood’s most ambitious eras.
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311258-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
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