Surreal and surprising, funny and unsettling, Carrier’s ebullient work defies common sense and annihilates the commonplace.
This remarkable collection strings together a broad range of bright, engaging personal essays along a common thread: the author’s dream of outrunning a pronghorn antelope.
Carrier has been writing about the American West since 1983 for outlets as varied as Harper’s and Esquire in print and All Things Considered and This American Life on the radio. His insight and wit render with the panache of good fiction his real-life experiences, from interviewing Medicaid-receiving schizophrenics in Utah and renovating a house to hitchhiking across America and exploring Cambodia, Kashmir, and Mexico. Memoir-essays about his family, neighbors, solitude, exploration, and pursuit of the antelope are simultaneously a relentless and exultant investigation of the quests and passions of the people he encounters along the way. Crystallized details that feel like excerpts from much longer stories afford brief, Technicolored glimpses into other people’s lives: a modern dancer’s feet are like suspension bridges; a Serbian truck driver tries to sell his cousin’s religious paintings in the basement of a renovated Pennsylvania pizza parlor; an idealistic young American woman among the international observers in Chiapas smokes a pipe. Not for Carrier the self-aggrandizing bravado of the journalist who has seen and done it all—rather, he expresses the humble awe of someone who has been lucky enough to see a bit of the world’s beauty and tried to make some sense of it. His concise mastery of language is an absolute joy.
Surreal and surprising, funny and unsettling, Carrier’s ebullient work defies common sense and annihilates the commonplace.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58243-111-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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