"Intelligence," guest editor Sontag notes in her introduction, "is a literary virtue, not just an energy or aptitude given literary clothing." And she goes on to insist that "it is hard to imagine an important essay that is not, first of all, a display of intelligence. And sheer intelligence of the highest order can in and of itself make a great essay." The choices here leave that assertion open to doubt, though. If smarts were all, then John Guillory's essay on the fallacy of canon formation and Philip Fisher's essay about Shakespeare's radical reinterpretation of the contingency of the passions in Hamlet would be classics. They're not, each written badly in its own way and each without the edge of argumentative flexibility that all great essays, even screeds and fragmenta, manage to lead with. Other things here, in contrast, are all voice, no content—essays by William Gass, Stanley Elkin, Patricia Storace, Elizabeth Hardwick, Leonard Michaels, Anne Carson—esoterica by virtue of their contrarian textures rather than their indwelling mental processes. The exceptions, then, stand out as all the more sterling. Best of all, in its exoteric generosity and clarity, is Joan Didion's devastating essay about New York and its "sentimental narratives"—politically muzzy but coming close to the last word about the city's self-destructive wane. Adam Gopnik's "Audubon's Passions" is a revelation, an invitation to see what we thought we'd seen and known. Sontag is a masterful enough essayist herself to know the real thing—which is why she reprints not one but two John Updike pieces, one on domestic objects in childhood, one on Mickey Mouse: Essays that in their adventurousness both of voice and interim conclusion fit the essentially plastic paradoxicalness of the essay form better than anything else here.
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1992
ISBN: 0-395-59935-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
A beguiling collection of sometimes insightful, often amusing columns from a mother of five who is also a widow, a bestselling author, and not Erma Bombeck. There is no question that the late Bombeck is missed for her heartfelt and pungent commentaries. But the void that she has left does not have to be filled by an Erma manquÇ. Mitchard, author of the novel that Oprah turned into a bestseller, The Deep End of the Ocean (1996), is of another generation and another lifestyle, the now-single mother, one of whose children was adopted after her husband died. Her syndicated newspaper column is in some ways the shallow end of her ocean, although it deals with concerns that she will undoubtedly address in greater depth in future novels. The author proclaims that she and her audience are all those women who are not Martha Stewart, not the girlfriend who was both calculus prodigy and cheerleader, but ``the rest of us.'' The column, she says, has been her anchor, the quasi-diary in which she begins to confront the questions of, for instance, death and adoption, both for herself and her children. But she also reflects on—and occasionally skewers— such concerns as women's magazines that herald make-work crafts (elves from detergent bottles) versus men's magazines that deal with really useful stuff (building shelves, repairing light fixtures), being expelled from the car pool, and meeting the mother of the baby you are about to adopt. Some of her reflections are funny, some aim for the jugular, some are genuinely moving, like those on life as a widow. Cherry-picked from newspaper columns, this collection is necessarily formulaic in style and uneven in content. Read it, nevertheless: It's written by a woman who dredges for what matters. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-87662-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
A bid to shed fresh light on the New Testament, weighed down by a disappointingly predictable party line: Jesus-as-radical-moral-teacher. These baby boomer writers have mostly ``revisited'' only a fraction of the New Testament, the Gospels, which novelist Moody (Purple America, p. 164, etc.) sees as ``great liberal documents in strong support of ethical universals.'' In rescuing the New Testament from the Christian Right, though, these writers don't realize that by almost exclusively using the Gospels, they've ceded some of the richest territory to the fundamentalists. That's why Joanna Scott's marvelous essay on Revelation is nothing short of a revelation (her discussion of symbols as ``masks'' in the text is truly stunning), and why Ann Powers's contribution, ``Teenage Jesus,'' falls flat. In her zeal to make Jesus culturally relevant to bohemian boomers, Powers utterly trivializes his message and mission. Portrayals of Jesus as a rebel with a good cause, or a misunderstood ethical teacher, are beyond prosaic. Several of the writers mention that their views of Jesus were heavily influenced by the rock-opera movie Jesus Christ Superstar, which helps explain this book's unidimensionality. Why not try new turf and explore the irascible Paul? Aside from one obligatory essay on 1 Corinthians 13 (de rigueur at American weddings), Paul is completely ignored. Standout essays include bell hooks's creative offering on the transformative power of love; Benjamin Cheever's offhanded appeal to ``judge not,'' and Jeffrey Eugenides's witty portrayal of the Holy Ghost in Acts: ``Jesus gets all the attention, all the reviews,'' Eugenides wryly observes. The editors of this anthology should have heeded his remark. In its narrow purview, this New Testament revisited is considerably less juicy than the original.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-316-57928-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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