Another volume of Beauvoir’s correspondence to lay on the shelf beside Letters to Sartre (1991), this time featuring letters written to a most unlikely lover, the American novelist Nelson Algren. It would be hard to imagine two more discrepant writers (or temperaments) than Beauvoir and Algren, but when they met while she was touring the US in 1947, it was love at first sight. Neither knew much about the other when they were introduced in Algren’s beloved Chicago, but before she returned to Paris, they spent two frenzied weeks together in New York, connecting on an intensely visceral level. Beauvoir often referred to him as “my husband.” She wrote to him in English, sometimes berating him for his stubborn refusal to learn French. The letters in this volume offer a view of the existentialist and the French literary elite of the late ’40s and ’50s as Beauvoir gives Algren a Cook’s tour of her daily life. Readers glimpse the torrid political atmosphere in Paris during the Indochina conflict, with Sartre the recipient of death threats, and of the ruffian behavior of such literary lights as Arthur Koestler, depicted by de Beauvoir as belligerently anticommunist when drunk, apologetic but self-absorbed when sober. Felicities are many in this hefty compendium, ranging from Beauvoir’s encounter with “this ridiculous thing which is called Truman Capote” to an encomium on flying (“I think when you are at a high pitch of emotion, it is the only way of traveling which fits with your own heart”). Her occasionally fractured English is not without charm, but too much of the book consists of repetitively girlish affirmations of love that are odd coming from such a writer and thinker. Minimal notes and (apparently) almost no editorial intervention make this a hard slog for all but the most ardent Beauvoirians.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56584-422-X
Page Count: 576
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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