bookshelf

CANDOR AND PERVERSION

Name: CANDOR AND PERVERSION
Author: Roger Shattuck
ISBN: 0-393-04807-1

LITERATURE, EDUCATION, AND THE ARTS

by Roger Shattuck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1999

bookshelf

Diverse essays on literature and the arts from an eminent critic who writes for the educated public rather than the academic specialist. Shattuck, professor emeritus of literature at Boston Univ., is probably best-known for his National Book Award—winning biography of Marcel Proust and his various books on French modernism, but his interests have always been wide-ranging. The most recent of his 12 books (Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, 1996) explored its title theme from earliest myth to the contemporary critical preoccupation with transgression. The new book picks up 39 essays—book reviews, public lectures, columns that he wrote for the liberal arts journal Salmagundi—that have appeared elsewhere over the past two decades. Interestingly, the hodgepodge format doesn—t vitiate the pleasure and insight that his book offers. In a way, it increases that pleasure, because it encourages browsing and dipping. Shattuck’s prose is urbane but never pretentious, “in the wake of the great literary journalists” he admires: Hazlitt, Baudelaire, and Edmund Wilson. Shattuck is a resolutely public critic, and early essays in the collection polemicize against the obscurantism and what he sees also as the moral corruption of contemporary academic criticism. Michel Foucault and his followers, in particular, come in for a sound drubbing. But the book’s greater part is taken up with book reviews, a genre that Shattuck masters with great flair. Reviews are the chief venue for literary journalism in our era, and Shattuck makes the most of it. Even though the books under review vary widely—from MallarmÇ to Mailer, from W.S. Merwin to Leopold Senghor—Shattuck’s own vision emerges clearly. Throughout he emphasizes the moral dimension of criticism, the link between art and lived human experience, and the ethical imperative of what he calls “intellectual craftsmanship.” Even if his polemics are a bit one-sided and sanctimonious, the overall effect of his writing about art and literature is engaging.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-393-04807-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
PROUST'S WAY
by Roger Shattuck

- BOOK REVIEW
FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
by Roger Shattuck

bookshelf

NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

bookshelf

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

bookshelf

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.