Pianist/pedogogue Sherman has mixed together takes on Zen philosophy and modern chaos theory with the meandering literary style of Laurence Sterne and snippets of fortune-cookie wisdom to produce this collection of brief, largely unrelated paragraphs on music, modern society, and piano technique. Seemingly incapable of expressing a thought that takes longer than a paragraph or two to develop, Sherman has created a book that is brief yet tedious. It is divided into five general parts: the first on piano playing, the next on teaching, a section of ``cultural critique,'' the fourth on interpreting the score, and a final ``coda'' that features more philosophical mumbling. As you might suspect from an expert pianist, Sherman is at his best when writing about the mechanics of piano playing. His description of the different fingers, for example, is amusingly poetic (``The thumb is a finger in the sense that a whale is a fish''). But his tendency to rely on facile linguistic games and puns (``Each chapter of the struggle tempers the mind and mines the temper'') has the effect, at best, of clouding his meaning. Sherman is at his worst as a social critic, bewailing the ``virtual reality and virtual junk'' that dominates contemporary life. He dislikes popular culture in general and rock music in particular, which he describes as ``monotonous, predictable, stagnant, and dreary.'' Yet he fails to acknowledge that his beloved Mozart, Wagner, and Chopin were all at one time blackened with the name of crowd pleasers. One recital would tell us more about piano playing than a library of books like this one.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-374-23206-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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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