Idiosyncratic readings by a generous, gifted writer who asks his readers to be open to a story’s poetry, its “light by which...
The celebrated poet offers a personal reading of fairy tales.
Revisiting subjects previously explored in Iron John and The Maiden King, National Book Award winner Bly (Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected Poems, 1950-2013, 2013, etc.) wants to use his “intuition and write about stages of men’s growth as I see them in these tales.” For the author, these stories “are amazing trees of sound that grow inside the human memory and are fed by some longing for intimacy with others.” In them, the “psyche is trying to communicate what it knows, trying to slip something past the guards of the dictator ego.” Bly is influenced in his interpretive retellings by some “astonishing thinkers” (Kierkegaard, Yeats, etc.) and “those two old clowns, Freud and Jung.” The author first recounts each story in his own words and then informally discusses it (“let’s pause for some comments here….But back to the story again”) in the light of a variety of sources and poets. In addition to studying the works of others, Bly includes some of his own poems, a few previously unpublished. “One part of us is educated and one is not, particularly the feeling side, for men,” he writes. “I want to write poems for each side that both parts can understand.” The story of the “White Bear King Valemon,” for example, “offers us many glimpses into the divine world, which are difficult for those of us brought up in a culture that prefers not to talk seriously of spiritual excess.” Some readers may be bothered by Bly’s “intuitive,” philosophical ruminations on the stories, but he hopes that the “conscious mind may receive the fragrance of the old stories, tales told centuries ago by male and female geniuses.”
Idiosyncratic readings by a generous, gifted writer who asks his readers to be open to a story’s poetry, its “light by which we may see life.”Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-15819-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
IN THE NEWS
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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
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