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REALIZATION

Name: REALIZATION
Author: Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri
ISBN: 978-1-5437-0244-6

(DOCUMENTS BASED ON SELF-SCHOLARLY EFFECTS WITH GOOGLE SCHOLAR CITATIONS)

by Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 29, 2018

This volume affectionately looks at famous texts, though some points remain muddled.

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A collection of essays focuses on venerable literary works.

Chaudhuri (War of Thrones, 2017) asserts in the preface that her goal in this book is to present some personal opinions on a few celebrated volumes. These texts include two by Shakespeare (Othello and Hamlet), one by Keats (Ode to a Nightingale), and one by the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore (The Lost Jewels). Each one is examined with the help of writings by established scholars, including A.C. Bradley and T.S. Eliot. The author adds her own analysis to topics that include the question of Hamlet’s sanity and the reflection of the human experience in Keats’ poetry (in contrast to his esteem for nature). The works are treated tenderly; Chaudhuri clearly holds them all in high regard. As the author writes of Keats, “His poetry has rarely been equaled in descriptions of the beauties perceptible to the senses.” Such earnest praise shows that these oft-discussed volumes can still inspire strong emotions in modern readers. Additionally, the inclusion of Tagore among the more famous authors (at least to the average American reader) makes for a noteworthy juxtaposition. But some of Chaudhuri’s views can be confusing. The author compares Othello’s death to Iago’s life, saying that the Moor’s suicide is certainly tragic “but of, to live as Iago lives, devouring the dust and stinging—this is more appalling.” The phrasing is awkward and, while Chaudhuri’s assertion is eventually clear, such sentences may require rereading. This makes much of the book slow going. The author writes of Hamlet that “with the appearance of the Ghost a second time, the structure of the action emphasizes that the ‘command’ that made the climax of the exposition has failed to be performed.” The passage is nearly as wordy as the scene it is describing. Nevertheless, even readers familiar with these volumes can glean new, thought-provoking details. For instance, as Chaudhuri points out, readers do not really know how old Hamlet is. That such considerations can still attract attention helps to prove the author’s contention that these works are worthy of discussion.

This volume affectionately looks at famous texts, though some points remain muddled.

Pub Date: March 29, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5437-0244-6

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PartridgeIndia

Review Posted Online: July 25, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
MY PEOPLE
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
TO THE MOUNTAINTOP
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW NEWS OUT OF AFRICA
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.