by Rosemary Sullivan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2002
Highbrow self-help for heterosexual women over 30.
In this absurdly titled little work, a poet and biographer of women (The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood, Starting Out, not reviewed; English/Univ. of Toronto) retells the old story of a woman’s obsessive passion for a self-centered man, then meditates on its themes.
It’s a familiar story: a woman with nothing to lose meets the one; they have an intense and delicious affair; she ends up heartbroken. In this modern version, shorn of Medea’s vengeance and Dido’s melodrama, Sullivan’s brief narrative provides points of entry for a sequence of episodic essays, most juxtaposing romantic fictions with factual love affairs: Dante and Beatrice, Sartre and Beauvoir, Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys. The prose, simple, intimate, and direct, and the quietly confident imagery lend force and clarity to a few salient observations about the trap of romantic obsession. But the overall effect is thin and inconsequential. Sullivan negotiates the turns between bits of memoir, biography, belles-lettres, and feminist pop psychology well enough, but each of these genres, except possibly the last, demands a depth or rigor that just isn’t there. The choice of texts is too arbitrary (not a syllable of Shakespeare), the thinking too shallow, the analysis too sloppy (the section on Charlotte Brontë gets wrong both an important plot element and the sequence in which two works were written) to convey either intellectual or scholarly authority. Despite some autobiographical passages, the writing is not intensely personal enough to carry the punch of an idiosyncratic self. So pop psychology wins after all: Sullivan ends with a coda to the original story that amounts to nothing more than a self-esteem lesson in the mode of Ms., circa 1985. And while it may seem unfair to criticize a study so small for neglecting women’s passion for other women, the consistency of that neglect in writing that purports to be about “women” in general grows tiresome.
Highbrow self-help for heterosexual women over 30.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-58243-177-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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by John McPhee ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2017
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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by David Sedaris ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2000
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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