A vivid chronicle of intellectual passion.
The story of a classics scholar who decisively changed views of Homer’s artistry.
Drawing on considerable archival sources, Kanigel recounts in thorough, engaging detail the life of Milman Parry (1902-1935), a Harvard classics professor whose investigation of Homer’s works proved groundbreaking. Because Parry was hard to know—colleagues recall the “impermeable steadfastness” of a man who shared little with anyone—Kanigel portrays him largely through the work that consumed him. Analyzing Homer’s epic poems for patterns of words and phrases, Parry argued that they were “born in song and speech,” not written but handed down orally. Rather than taking up the question of authorship—whether the Iliad and Odyssey were created by one person or several—Parry believed that they were part of a tradition that “placed scant premiums on invention or originality.” Often performed by illiterate singers, they were “forever altered in performance,” responding to listeners’ expectations about style and language. Kanigel chronicles Parry’s youth in Oakland, California; education at Berkeley, where he was influenced by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, among others; and completion of doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, where his thesis, published in 1928, “built a new intellectual edifice” and, through the efforts of his student Albert Lord, created the new discipline of oral studies. Beginning in 1933, Parry undertook extensive visits to Yugoslavia to find and record modern-day epic singers, returning with more than 1,000 recorded discs. While still an undergraduate, Parry married a fellow student after she became pregnant, but she was hardly a soul mate, and Kanigel uncovers evidence of her volatile personality and rage about her husband’s alleged infidelities. The quality of their marriage looms over the circumstances of Parry’s death: While he and his wife were in a Los Angeles hotel, he died of a gunshot wound. Ruled an accident, some family members—their daughter, for one—suspected that his wife killed him. As in previous books, Kanigel’s skill as a biographer is on full display, though general readers may get lost in some of the technical analysis.
A vivid chronicle of intellectual passion.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-52094-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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