Lifelong companions are remembered in variety and gratefulness in this collection of original essays. Boston lawyer and essayist Shwartz has assembled a fine coterie of more than 100 writers. There’s strong representation of esteemed writers known by surnames—Barth, Hawkes, Lessing, Mailer, Oates, Ozick, Paley, Updike—plus academics Witold Rybczynski and Robert Coles, journalists Anna Quindlen and Pete Hamill, and current biggies Frank McCourt and James McBride. Those wanting full multicultural spread will need to look elsewhere, as will readers troubled by the mere presence of firebrands Stanley Fish or P.J. O’Rourke. Better than complaining is to luxuriate in the memories of intellectual awakening and young endless hours to drink books in. Early choices for Jonathan Harr and others was Sherlock Holmes, for Tracy Kidder and others, Little Women. But for adolescent siren call to serious reading and writing, most cited is Dickens. “Great Expectations is the first novel I read that made me wish I had written it; it is the novel that made me want to be a writer,” says John Irving. Nabokov, Yeats, Joyce, Melville, Woolf, Tolstoy, and Conrad are often named as lifelong influences on language and thought, though many writers cite the odd title as important. The Uta (a collection of early Japanese poetry) captured Gretel Ehrlich’s feelings of exile; the children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon showed Rita Dove “the possibilities of traveling on the line of one’s imagination.” All these pieces enter a writer’s mind, but some are more welcoming than others. Not surprisingly, the most readable pieces are those by columnists and nonfiction mavens such as Roy Blount Jr., Justin Kaplan, and Dave Barry, who takes a funny trek from Archie comics to Calvin Trillin. For community with those who have loved Tarzan forever or inspiration to finally read Proust, this is a memory book of fond epiphanies.
Pub Date: March 8, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-14466-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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