Brandon (The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini, 1994, etc.), a prominent biographer and fiction writer, explores the aesthetics, politics, and psychology of Surrealism by unraveling the complex personal histories of the movement’s key players. Among multiple sources of Surrealism, Brandon highlights two: Marxism and Freudianism. Born of the turmoil of WWI and christened by Apollinaire, this revolutionary artistic trend advocated anarchy, sided with the political left during the interwar period, and aspired to produce an iconoclastic “anti-art.” A creative use of dreams, delving into the subconscious, and a preoccupation with sex, death, and excrement complemented the Surrealists’ political radicalism. Although nowadays we associate Surrealism primarily with visual art, literary figures like the autocratic AndrÇ Breton headed the movement at its inception. Transgression of boundaries between different artistic media was quite common, and many artists also wrote poetry or prose. After the shock induced by Bu§uel’s films, cinematography advanced as the most immediate Surrealist format. Brandon systematically points out the eccentricities that shaped Surrealists’ lives and, consequently, their creative process. Despising conventional moral and family values and considering procreation “sloppy” at best, many Surrealists were involved in mÇnages Ö trois, bisexual relations, and unscrupulous leeching off rich American lovers. On the other hand, Elsa Triolet and Gala Eluard successfully exploited their husbands’ talents to attain the lifestyle they desired. Elsa made Louis Aragon a national icon and had him endorse her writing; the “nymphomaniacal harpy” Gala achieved fame and wealth by transforming (her second husband) Dal°’s originally subversive art into expensive commercial entertainment, compliant with the Fascist regimes in Spain and Germany. Scattering its principles by the wayside, the Surrealist movement stumbled toward its zenith, torn by internal contradictions. Rooted to a large extent in neurotic obsessions, pathological tendencies, and introspective observation, Surrealism is a rare case where insights into artists’ lives facilitate interpretation of their creations. A marvelous job of using biographical material to demystify esoteric art.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8021-1653-1
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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