Now that he's set down once and for all time a system of literary structural analysis (S/Z, 1974), what can Barthes possibly do for an encore? What but undercut his own scientific vision with the pleasure principle, showing off the text "in something like the way in which psychoanalysis has exhibited man's erotic body." It's the most basic of aesthetic questions—why is literature pleasure-giving? and what is the source of the pleasure? The originality of his rapid-fire answers is dizzying, exhausting. No critic is more perverse or more fecund than Barthes—this essay leaps from one illumination to the next with no more continuity than any other contemporary avant-garde display. But because of his stylistic commitment to modernity, he is the only critic who can meet Sade, Robbe-Grillet and Sarduy (as well as Zola and Proust) on their own subversive ground. Not an explication: a striptease revealing what is absolutely new in the art of narrative.
Pub Date: May 27, 1975
ISBN: 0374521603
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1975
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
BOOK REVIEW
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.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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