Tasty samples from a most eclectic and inviting bibliophilic menu.
Just when you think you’ve read a few books, here comes a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic with jaunty evidence that you haven’t read Jack—not to mention Jill, Jacques and many others.
Sorted into 11 categories (“Love’s Mysteries,” “Lives of Consequence,” etc.), this latest entry in Dirda’s inspiring lit-crit series (Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life, 2006, etc.) offers a little bit of everything—from John Aubrey to Zola, from books we’ve all read, or claimed to (Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein), to writers of whom honest folks will admit they’ve heard little, if anything (William Roughead, Sheridan Le Fanu). Dirda employs approximately the same approach to each of the 90-some writers he includes: sketchy biographical material (he offers more for those with troubled or troubling lives, e.g., Ezra Pound), a bit of summary (generally swift and felicitous enough to engage), some sort of encomium. The biographical bonbons are sometimes luscious, as in his wonderful note about how the hand of the dying Henry James moved as if writing across the spread on his deathbed, and Dirda’s humor and wit are evident throughout: Walter de la Mare’s Memoirs of a Midget, for instance, is “one of the best novels that Henry James never wrote.” He also pauses periodically to deliver schoolmasterish warnings about paying more attention to so-and-so and is especially convincing with his tribute to Willa Cather (less so with Zora Neale Hurston). Politics are generally absent, though Dirda can’t resist including a paragraph from Utopia of eerie relevance to the current military situation in the Middle East. The superlatives become a little shopworn after 300 pages, but perhaps English is simply inadequate to provide sufficient words to praise this many terrific writers and wonderful works of literature.
Tasty samples from a most eclectic and inviting bibliophilic menu.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-15-101251-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
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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