Ebersole and Peabody (Mondo Barbie, 1993, etc.) continue their exploration of national icons with this collection of stories and poems. As the introduction points out, three decades after her death, there have been 17 plays, 14 TV movies, seven films, one ballet, a song or two, and even one opera about America's favorite blond bombshell. In these sometimes inventive, but sometimes ludicrous and often boring tales, the glorification of the enigmatic Norma Jean continues as the authors use her eternally elusive personality as an opportunity to make her up to suit their own means and play out their own abundant, and too frequently immature, fantasies. Marilyn is emulated, incorporated, molested, recalled, and forgotten. In Julia P. Dubner's ``Saturday Afternoon, June, Long Island, New York,'' she reads Ulysses, despite Arthur Miller's teasing. The strongest contributions are those in which Marilyn makes the most obvious appearance, as a starlet or icon: L.A. Lantz's ``Waiting to See,'' in which a 14-year-old's heretofore complacent mother, compelled by the infamously sultry rendition of ``Happy Birthday'' delivered to JFK, takes it upon herself to rid her community of all traces of the woman who will destroy the moral fiber of the country; and Gregg Shapiro's ``Marilyn, My Mother, Myself,'' in which a son, after coming out of the closet, becomes the recipient of every bit of Marilyn memorabilia his mother can dig up, from ashtrays to Franklin Mint dolls, and finds himself unable to break the news to her that he's never been a fan. In weak pieces, Clive Barker turns Marilyn into a blood-sucking alien, and Michael Hemmingson, in ``Twenty-six Marilyns or An Alphabet Soup Full of Marilyns or Marilyn X 26 = or A Vignette Collage of Marilyns or Just Too Damn Many Marilyns,'' makes her a literary critic. Other contributors include Doris Grumbach, J.G. Ballard, and Charles Bukowski. A couple of worthwhile efforts separated by many an oops.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11853-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
While a few weeks ago it seemed as if Praeger would have a two month lead over Dutton in their presentation of this Soviet best seller, both the "authorized" edition (Dutton's) and the "unauthorized" (Praeger's) will appear almost simultaneously. There has been considerable advance attention on what appears to be as much of a publishing cause celebre here as the original appearance of the book in Russia. Without entering into the scrimmage, or dismissing it as a plague on both your houses, we will limit ourselves to a few facts. Royalties from the "unauthorized" edition will go to the International Rescue Committee; Dutton with their contracted edition is adhering to copyright conventions. The Praeger edition has two translators and one of them is the translator of Doctor Zhivago Dutton's translator, Ralph Parker, has been stigmatized by Praeger as "an apologist for the Soviet regime". To the untutored eye, the Dutton translation seems a little more literary, the Praeger perhaps closer to the rather primitive style of the original. The book itself is an account of one day in the three thousand six hundred and fifty three days of the sentence to be served by a carpenter, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. (Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner.) From the unrelenting cold without, to the conditions within, from the bathhouse to the latrine to the cells where survival for more than two weeks is impossible, this records the hopeless facts of existence as faced by thousands who went on "living like this, with your eyes on the ground". The Dutton edition has an excellent introduction providing an orientation on the political background to its appearance in Russia by Marvin Kalb. All involved in its publication (translators, introducers, etc.) claim for it great "artistic" values which we cannot share, although there is no question of its importance as a political and human document and as significant and tangible evidence of the de-Stalinization program.
Pub Date: June 15, 1963
ISBN: 0451228146
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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