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TO JERUSALEM AND BACK

A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

Bellow goes to Israel in 1975—not to see the sights, but to talk, listen, and learn—and returns drenched in issues ("the facts are coming out of my ears") and keen on sharing his radar-oven exposure to the crossed wires (Israeli, Arab, Russian, American) that keep the Middle East just this side of all-out conflagration. The journey itself supplies only a feathery structure and relatively little in the way of travelogue commonplaces: a planeful of wildly willful Hasidim, communings with Mount Zion and the Dead Sea ("here you die and mingle"), a wander through the Old City in search of ancient baths. Two poets, a barber, a masseur, and a child violinist offer charming cameos, but politicians and professors are the main attractions; there are intense question-and-answer sessions with Prime Minister Rabin, Abba Eban, Arab moderate Elie Kedourie (a London stop-over), and, inevitably, upon return, a date with Mr. Kissinger. Each acquaintance, occurrence or vista—from a grapevine arbor in the Greek quarter to a Chicago taxicab ride—triggers a free-associative dive into Bellow's vast "personal Israel syllabus": dozens of books, articles, white papers, and remembered interviews. The elegant paraphrases of political arguments slide into personal and literary reflections. Balzac, Baudelaire, Faulkner, Joyce, and Tolstoy hover over Jerusalem. But the real problems aren't muted by the slightly incongruous erudition, the gentle ironies, or the ever-surprising, pleasing phrasing. The West Bank, Russian and French anti-Semitism, valid Palestinian claims, and the all-important future of American Mideast policy; Bellow is overwhelmed—and occasionally rendered naive or tedious—by the seriousness of what you discover "when you leave your desk and enter life." The outing to Jerusalem and back earns him no peace of mind, and responsible readers have tough work ahead if they want to share the expedition's dry rewards.

Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1976

ISBN: 0141180757

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1976

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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