A worthy collection that would have benefitted from further effort from the book’s editor and publisher.
A short anthology of features from acclaimed newspaperman and magazine writer Talese (The Voyeur’s Motel, 2016, etc.).
The collection features 13 pieces, many of which appeared in Esquire, where the author gained renown beginning in the early 1960s after his stint at the New York Times; others ran in the New Yorker, New York magazine, and the New York Observer. Despite having been published decades ago in some instances, the content of the magazine pieces does not seem dated; one of Talese's strengths has always been his ability to explore eternal themes. The anthology can also be appreciated as a demonstration of craft. Talese's techniques are worthy of study, especially his unique talent for fully immersing himself in the lives of his subjects. Unfortunately, the book offers little in the way of added value other than an insightful four-page introduction by writer/scholar Lee Gutkind, who is often known as the father of creative nonfiction. The anthology lacks fresh commentary by Talese himself, and none of the 13 pieces contain further analysis by Gutkind or others. Another disappointment is the lack of updates to the feature stories. Happily, the collection includes what is almost certainly Talese's best-known magazine piece, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," as well as previously published commentary by Talese about how the Sinatra story, which was published in Esquire in 1966, came together. In two pieces, Talese examines the inner workings of his former employer, the New York Times. Other subjects include an organized crime family (the Bonannos), a mass murderer (Charles Manson), a pornography publisher (Harold Rubin), an apparently homeless woman, a Russian opera singer (Marina Poplavskaya), and the unlikely collaboration of two pop-music stars (Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga).
A worthy collection that would have benefitted from further effort from the book’s editor and publisher.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-746-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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