Philosopher, art critic, novelist, and co-editor of the EncyclopÇdie (the ``bible'' of the Enlightenment), Diderot enjoyed a reputation for wit, wisdom, and intellectual generosity—which is sustained in this admiring critical biography. But, as in his E.M. Forster (1978), Furbank sees his subject's ``dark'' side as well, obliquely revealed in Diderot's fiction. Aside from an early marriage to an unsuitable and shrewish wife, a liaison with a longtime mistress, and a relationship with his daughter AngÇlique, Diderot subordinated his personal life to his public life as a man of letters. But there are hidden emotional conflicts and mysteries suggested in Furbank's readings of Rameau's Nephew, The Nun, and Jacques the Fatalist. Furbank carefully traces the origins of Diderot's eclectic philosophy in Lucretius, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hume; his many literary associations and quarrels (especially with Rousseau); his finances; his role in the pamphlet ``war'' over the relative merits of French and Italian music; his ``invention'' of art criticism; and his impact on European culture, especially on Lessing, Goethe, Zola, and August Comte, who, like many, considered Diderot the ``greatest man'' of the 18th century. While Diderot's dogmatic and impractical ideas on government alienated Catherine the Great, who thought he needed a ``keeper,'' Diderot was considered dangerous in France, where ideas were taken seriously enough for society women to hold salons for intellectual exchange and for philosophers to be imprisoned or exiled. It is that sense of the centrality of intellectual life that Furbank conveys, while intimating another nature—repressed, passionate, even bestial—hidden in Diderot's novels, short stories, and dramas, on which the biographer comments at length. Polite and respectful, with some fashionable allusions to Roland Barthes and M.M. Bakhtin. (Eight pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 6, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41421-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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
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