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PUSHKIN'S BUTTON

Name: PUSHKIN'S BUTTON
Author: Serena Vitale
ISBN: 0-374-23935-5

by Serena Vitale ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1999

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An Italian scholar’s unorthodox take on the events leading to Pushkin’s fatal duel reads like impassioned fiction. On January 27, 1837, one of Russia’s greatest poets, Alexander Pushkin, died as the result of a wound inflicted during a duel he—d fought to defend his wife’s honor. His opponent was none other than his sister-in-law’s husband, Georges d’Anthes, a French officer. Readers will recognize telltale signs in Vitale’s (Russian/Univ. of Pavia, Italy) narrative of the typically massive Russian novel: the cast of thousands (here enumerated in a 24-page “Index of Names”) and the story’s soap-opera-like overtones. Combining her own research with information gleaned from secondary literature and the memoirs and letters of Pushkin’s contemporaries, this account brims with humor, drama, scholarly insight, and a breathless conversational tone, hinting of espresso and cigarette smoke wafting in a cafe corner. Vitale’s approach, however, is not for everyone. The duel occurs some 242 pages into the text. Chapter titles, like the title of the book, are more poetic than informative. And the facts are often conveyed repetitiously. Still, the drawbacks seem finally beside the point, for Vitale brings to life the drama of Pushkin’s end, from the state of the poet “whose frenzied jealousy was known to all,” to the doings of his flirtatious wife and the royal court, Pushkin’s strained relations with the tsar, and the bizarre case of d’Anthes’s adoption by a Dutch ambassador and his affairs with the women of St. Petersburg. Also, the author eagerly takes up her role as detective, investigating d’Anthes’s circumstances, his opinion of Pushkin’s wife, and the circulated letter that provoked the duel. With its unabashed love of intrigue and nuance, Vitale’s unusual chronicle of Pushkin’s final days will appeal to any lover of Russian literature, history, and culture.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-374-23935-5

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945

ISBN: 0061130249

Page Count: 450

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND
by Richard Wright

- BOOK REVIEW
SEEING INTO TOMORROW
by Richard Wright ; illustrated by Nina Crews

- BOOK REVIEW
A FATHER’S LAW
by Richard Wright

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.