A unique and intoxicating blend of personal and urban history, music-biz thrill ride and unintentional elegy for a way of...
At a crossroads in his life, itinerant writer and music dabbler Cohn (Yes We Have No, 1999, etc.) dives into the messy realm of the New Orleans rap scene.
The author had nursed an abiding love of the Crescent City from the first time he discovered New Orleans jazz as a young Londoner. He lived there off and on beginning in the early ’70s, but when a ten-year-old black boy spit on him one day in 2000, Cohn realized “the climate had changed.” Aging and afflicted with hepatitis C, he didn’t simply turn from New Orleans in disgust; instead, he headed further in to confront his fears and rediscover just what it was that kept him coming back to this poverty-ridden city, crumbling long before Katrina’s catastrophic arrival. Gaining entrée to the roiling local rap culture by saying he wanted to write about it, Cohn ended up falling in love with the whole scene, eventually becoming (in affectingly tragicomic fashion) a producer of sorts. The chronicle of his adventures is a rowdy celebration of the anti-tourist Crescent City, a town of falling-apart projects where every block has its own nascent rap label and promising young stars fall victim to violence—or apathy. The author spends plenty of time painting a self-deprecating portrait of himself as an “Anglo-Irish Russian German South African Jew” and outsider, even though the rappers he moved among were impressed that he was writing a book and, more importantly to them, that he had contacts at record companies. He captures with vivid strokes a gallery of other characters: an entire universe of strivers and dreamers celebrating the very same ghetto life they were fighting to escape.
A unique and intoxicating blend of personal and urban history, music-biz thrill ride and unintentional elegy for a way of life now wiped from the earth.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4245-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
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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