Slowly, slowly, but sometimes delightfully, O'Toole takes us through just his first year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in this second volume of his memoirs (after (Loitering with Intent: The Child, 1993). At the current rate of progress, fans will have to wait quite a bit longer to get to O'Toole's celebrated screen career in films such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Lion in Winter. Actors are notoriously self-obsessed, but O'Toole breaks new ground as he batters us with insignificant anecdote after anecdote on the ephemera of his life. For a few pages, this looping, discursive style is engagingly oddball, and in a profession whose practitioners are not known for their literary abilities, O'Toole's prose is certainly polished and playful, although too self- consciously Joycean at times. But as with the first volume, he is not content merely to bore and frustrate us with a laundry list of details (and, yes, he even discusses his laundry), he also feels compelled to constantly digress in all directions and at length. In particular, he never misses an opportunity to discuss the great Shakespearean actor (and presumed kindred spirit) Edmund Kean. O'Toole does have some interesting thoughts on acting and on the teaching of acting, amusingly comparing the Stanislavski Method to the game of cricket. Like many British actors, O'Toole prefers a more deliberately constructed and calibrated style of acting. As he says rather severely of rehearsals, ``[They] are no occasion for dabblings in the inexact science of nature, functions, and phenomena of the human soul and mind.'' If only he could have brought his actor's precision and discipline to his prose. There is a charming, witty, lapidary, very slim volume somewhere in here, but it is buried under minutiae.
Pub Date: Feb. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-7868-6065-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
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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