At the crossroads between the past and the present, but central to the intellectual temper of our time, James Joyce stands with Mann, Eliot, Yeats, Bergson and Proust. He deserves a definitive and major biography- here accomplished by the critic, essayist and biographer of Yeats. Ellman, with enormous patience, has researched the incredible mass of material which Joyce has provided himself and provoked from others; and along with the critical material, the personal correspondence, he has also apparently interviewed every living person who knew Joyce. He has added a little new knowledge, dealing with his wife and with the prototypes of some of the characters in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. The result is a complete account of that "simple middle class man", "a man of small virtue given to alcoholism"- these were Joyce's own words. His raillery, atheism, pride, wit and Rabelaisian vigor are already well known; the book is most illuminating when it deals with Joyce's intellectual aims and accomplishments and this portrait of the writer is certainly just and balanced as well as sympathetic. It will probably answer all curiosities about Joyce, and supplements the works themselves, which still provide the truest portrait of the artist. It is an important literary biography.
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1959
ISBN: 0195031032
Page Count: 968
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1959
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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