A hoot and a half for fans of sometimes-hapless wandering.
The genially sardonic actor and comedian recounts occasionally misbegotten, always laugh-inducing travels.
Offerman opens his latest book, at times reminiscent of the work of British traveler Redmond O’Hanlon, with a gimlet eye on billboards that proclaim the planks of fundamentalist Christianity. “I don’t feel the need,” he writes, “to erect a sign in my yard proclaiming ‘BEEF TALLOW IS THE FUCKING BOSS.’ ” Offerman entertainingly chronicles his travels in the Montana Rockies with two perhaps unlikely companions, novelist George Saunders and musician Jeff Tweedy. Well-known as a fine woodworker, Offerman contrasts his love of fancy gear, a love shared by Tweedy, with Saunders’ asceticism: “It was his water bottle that made me realize how his whole gear vibe was screaming ‘unassuming pragmatism.’ ” Saunders got in a little less trouble than the other two as they hiked along the sheer cliffs of Glacier National Park, a place that prompts the author to meditate on the history and fate of public lands: “We three middle-aged white guys, ever aware of our privilege, had taken pretty full advantage of the recreation available in the glorious acreage that some other white guys had set aside for just that purpose.” After a side journey among craftspeople and farmers in the English Midlands, where he gamely tried to build a stone wall in the old way, he took off on a Covid-evading RV road trip with wife and fellow actor Megan Mullally, a journey fraught with encounters with the denizens of the recent film Nomadland. “When it comes to navigating RV parks and their gatekeepers,” he notes, “there is a substantial culture of unwritten laws of the jungle.” Offerman’s forays into social criticism are sometimes sharp but never elitist even as he professes disdain for the Jan. 6 crowd and its “batshit mouthpiece,” the pillow king.
A hoot and a half for fans of sometimes-hapless wandering.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-101-98469-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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