“The incidence of skin cancer in Greenland quadruples in twelve years but we just turn the page.” Time to start paying...
A concussive harangue on civilization’s venal depravity, with short incantatory sentences piled one atop the other like fuel on a bonfire, by fiction-writer Brownstein (Music From the Evening of the World, 1989).
“America, your only hope is a major detox. / A national enema, a transnational colonic! / America, go on a vision quest.” It’s apocalypse time: a world awash in corporate greed and fear-mongering, a global sameness of predictability and standardization, a suffocating market against which all is measured, an environment on the brink, gated communities sown where corn once grew, a complacent population with all the earmarks of amnesia. Yes, you have heard this before—Peter Finch was screaming it out a window 25 years ago—but Brownstein has a distinctive, confrontational approach, jangling and repetitive and vital. “Now’s the time of the motherfuckers . . . / Drifting skeins of cash-driven power wrapped around the world, trying to turn the Goddess into a desiccated mummy.” Jeremy Rifkin, Noam Chomsky, Jean Baudrillard, Eduardo Galeano, and others make fitting cameo appearances as Brownstein skewers fossil-fuel energy, monomorphism in medicine, radiation from cell phones, and the telling fact that Americans down one-half of all tranquilizers produced. It’s not all ranting and raving: the author also makes a case for oceanic omnidirectional time; a communing, sustaining, simplified life; the celebration of difference; and a leap into the unknown. Opening eyes to the problems and possibilities will always be a prerequisite for fundamental change, and Brownstein’s points are well taken. Yet few will share his view of drugs as a lasting tool to ignite change or his lamentations on behalf of primitivism, though Brownstein is also quick to urge a look around as well as a look back.
“The incidence of skin cancer in Greenland quadruples in twelve years but we just turn the page.” Time to start paying attention, says Brownstein, wisely, time to say that too much is unacceptable.Pub Date: May 22, 2002
ISBN: 1-890447-29-3
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Open City
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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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