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TRESPASSING

Name: TRESPASSING
Author: Sam Pickering
ISBN: 0-87451-640-4

by Sam Pickering ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 1994

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From Pickering—English professor (Univ. of Connecticut) and reluctant inspiration for the movie Dead Poets Society—more essays that distill from life's accumulated clutter the small telling details that amuse, illuminate, and often lyrically celebrate. Like the long walks he takes in search of life forced ``under a microscope,'' Pickering's essays not only explore themes in a leisurely way but digress: He makes pithy comments on family and colleagues, relates old Southern jokes, and records the summer appearance of a milkweed plant or the amount of native raspberries recently picked. In the title essay, Pickering happily ignores a gate marked State Property—No Trespassing and goes on to confess that for years he has trespassed, ``for a closed gate is an open invitation to explore. Writers, of course, forever trespass, wandering beyond the margins of good behavior into off-limits and then converting private property into public life.'' A free- spirited trespasser, he eavesdrops on conversations in his local coffee shop and roams the fields behind his Connecticut neighbors. In ``Reading Martin Chuzzlewit'' he admits that a rare visit to a mall makes him ``imagine a hidden life, an hour tangled with ribbons and sweet red surprises'' with the women he sees there. Tempted by an invitation to interview for a college presidency in his native Tennessee, he acknowledges that although a longtime critic of college athletics, he was prepared to consider football ``too trivial to become a matter of principle and prevent me from accepting'' such a position (``Sweet Auburn''); and while closing up his father's apartment, he discovers that ``selling is infectious, raising the fervor of the seller, more than that of the buyer'' (``A Different Seller''). The jokes are often outrageously corny, the whimsy strained, but they're all part of the delight Pickering so palpably creates in this endearing celebration of the ordinary, the profound, and, most of all, the absurd.

Pub Date: May 20, 1994

ISBN: 0-87451-640-4

Page Count: 264

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
LETTERS TO A TEACHER
by Sam Pickering

- BOOK REVIEW
A LITTLE FLING
by Sam Pickering

- BOOK REVIEW
DEPRIVED OF UNHAPPINESS
by Sam Pickering

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THE LIVES OF DANIELLE STEEL

THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF THE WORLD'S BESTSELLING AUTHOR

by Vickie Bane & Lorenzo Benet ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

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Danielle's dirty linen. A lot of this unauthorized biography is about legal wrangling, much of it to do with child custody. It's a good story, but Steel could have told it better. Bane and Benet, People magazine staff reporters, follow up on their Steel exposÇ of 1992 (written with Paula Chin) with this book cobbled together from interviews, court depositions, and letters Steel wrote to her second husband, Danny Zugelder (most while he was in prison). Heaven knows Steel's life is more than the stuff of romance. She was a neglected child. When she was hospitalized with ovarian cancer at 16, her parents never visited her. She married two convicts: Zugelder, a car thief and bank robber, who was also jailed for assault and rape (they were married in a prison ceremony and consummated their relationship in a bathroom); and Bill Toth, a heroin addict imprisoned for fencing stolen goods. Toth and Steel fought over custody of their son, Nicholas, and much of the last half of the bio comes from trial depositions and interviews with Toth and his lawyers. Steel finally found her putative Prince Charming in John Traina, who the authors take pains to point out is not and has never been a shipping magnate, though he does have a dynamite collection of cigarette cases and closets full of designer clothes. With their nine children, Steel and Traina bought the enormous Spreckels mansion in San Francisco. They also own a mini- compound in the Napa Valley, where they house a fleet of cars and a staff of thousands. For the sins of success, eccentricity, and a strong sense of privacy, the authors try to build a case against Steel. But in the end she comes through as a hard worker and a gritty survivor. It's you-can-run-but-you-can't-hide journalism, gossipy with a sound foundation, and not too high on elegant turns of phrase. (First printing of 100,000; author tour)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-312-11257-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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EGYPTIAN MUMMIES

UNRAVELING THE SECRETS OF AN ANCIENT ART

by Bob Brier ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 1994

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Everything you always wanted to know about the ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying corpses—and so much more. Brier (Ancient Egyptian Magic, 1980) sets the tone early: ``For 15 years,'' he states matter-of-factly, ``I had been working toward the goal of mummifying a human.'' Imagine his surprise and disappointment when the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University (where he is chairman of the philosophy department) declined the honor of being the site of this project, which among other things would have entailed keeping an unembalmed corpse on the campus for 70 days. The text treats the reader to a scattershot review of the wide variety of information Brier learned about mummies while doing research for the mummification. These range from clinical descriptions of the process (derived from Herodotus and other ancient writers as well as from archaeological evidence) through an account of the development of mummification in ancient Egypt to a fascinating look at medical information scientists have derived from mummies (for instance, that ancient Egyptians suffered from often fatal tooth decay and arterial diseases). Brier discusses French scientists' close, but disappointingly unfruitful, study of Ramses the Great's mummy, briefly takes note of the Egyptian religious and cultural practice of mummifying animals, and inventories famous royal mummies. He concludes rather far afield with a discussion of ``The Mummy in Fiction and Film.'' Mercifully, the book closes before he embarks on the macabre task of actually mummifying a medical cadaver in the ancient manner, which is scheduled to take place this summer. A great gift idea for the hard-core Egyptologist in your life. General readers with strong stomachs may also enjoy Brier's eccentric ramble through the ancient world. (125 b&w photos, not seen)