by Shawn Wen ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2017
Readers will marvel not only at Marceau, but at the book itself, which displays such command of the material and such...
A unique, poetic critical appreciation of Marcel Marceau (1923-2007).
The first few pages of radio producer and artist Wen’s short book look like blank verse, with succinct lines and plenty of white space. As the narrative unfolds into a meditation on the famous French mime, the poetry never leaves, even as Marceau’s inner voice advises, “leave speech behind. The body has its own language: weight, resistance, hesitation, surprise.” Surprises abound within these chapters, many no longer than a paragraph and few extending more than a couple of pages. The first surprise is the author’s ability to convey, in carefully chosen words, the essence and significance of this wordless art, especially when the reader learns that she is a radio producer, perhaps drawn to her subject because radio is the least promising medium for mime. Then there’s the American attitude toward mime in general, a disdain that makes such a fascinating book on one all the more of a wonder. “A journalist asked Marcel Marceau why most Americans hated mime,” writes Wen. “Marceau responded, ‘Because most mimes are lousy.’ ” The author meticulously details what distinguished the artist, the self-proclaimed “Picasso of mime,” in a series of scenes that show the magic of his performances and in annotated catalogs of the collections of artifacts that made the environment he constructed what his daughter called a “world apart” and a “virtual museum.” Wen also tiptoes into his personal life. His first wife “said he would not speak to her for days on end. She called it mental cruelty. He called it rehearsal.” She also traces the arc of his decline, his old age and death, and the apostle he left behind: “They learned to reproduce his gestures faithfully. And when they succeeded in mirroring the master, they began to unravel the art.”
Readers will marvel not only at Marceau, but at the book itself, which displays such command of the material and such perfect pitch.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-941411-48-3
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Sarabande
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
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PROFILES
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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SEEN & HEARD
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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Pulitzer Prize Finalist
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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