Assimilating masses of published and unpublished sources and hearsay, this ``popular'' biography, according to Costello (The Real World of Sherlock Holmes, 1991, etc.), is ``radically new'' in reconstructing Joyce's early years—the social, political, cultural, and domestic life; the family, friends, education, and economic circumstances that provided the prototypes and themes of his fiction. Although he believes that biography is ``a form of higher fiction,'' Costello offers few flights of fancy in his cautious demonstration of the relation between art and life. Indeed, he treats the life much like Joycean critics treat the fiction, assigning multiple and dark meanings to virtually everything, especially to those defining moments Joyce called ``epiphanies.'' Discussing Joyce's being bitten by a dog when he was five, for example, Costello extrapolates to the writer's lifelong aversion to dogs and ``reverence'' for cats, and his discovery—in the pharmacist who treated him—of a model for the high-school science teacher in Ulysses. And then there's Joyce's confusing pain and love, which Costello says came from the ``bizarre but not unlikely'' experience of being punished by having a toilet flushed on his head. The author offers vivid explanations of the writer's life at Bray, his Jesuit education, his sexual growth, his intellectual life, his spiritual struggles, and—detailed in a brief prologue—his life in exile following the publication of Ulysses. Costello especially admires Nora (who saved Joyce from becoming ``just another drunken failed poet''), but he depicts the couple's life together mostly as a record of places they lived and of what Joyce wrote there, of how he earned (or failed to earn) a living. The most Joycean parts of the book are in the appendices: Joyce's ``genetic make-up'' traced to his great-great-grandparents; complete genealogies, including the ``pedigree'' of Stephen, the last surviving Joyce; and a horoscope. Of interest, then, though Richard Ellmann's James Joyce remains the definitive life. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs.)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-42201-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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