Well-wrought work strongly seasoned with polemic.
A skilled fiction-writer and essayist trains his eye on contemporary writers.
Mallon (Civil War novel Two Moons, 1999, etc.) writes for publications ranging from GQ to the Yale Review, and these pieces show a similar breadth: whether sizing up Nicholson Baker (whose strength, he writes, lies in depicting the small in epic proportions) or describing Don DeLillo as the first author to write a post–Cold War novel (Underworld, 1997), Mallon always follows the E.B. White school of prose: everything is clear and concise and definitive. Each essay is a model for those who aspire to the form, but the author uses his clarity to sharp ends: Mallon has literary bones to pick, especially with memoirists whom he views as more concerned with their own feelings and interior lives than the world around them. Twice Mallon writes that he’d “rather end the day having had one clear thought than one strong feeling” and, by the way he judges writers, the reader believes him. His love for thought, at the expense of feeling, is allied to his love for hard facts and historical fiction (he has written five historical novels). Sometimes this stance is right on target: his review of David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars (“Snow Falling on Readers”) blasts its sentimentality, moving anyone who enjoyed the story to shame. When attacking Will Self’s novels for failing to realize their own potential, however, one feels the specter of rigidity rearing its ugly head. And when he (partially) praises Edmund Morris’s biography of Ronald Reagan, Dutch, Mallon reveals that sometimes fact can be circumvented when it involves some of his favorite themes. But these, after all, are Mallon’s essays and, while sometimes they show cracks, they are fundamentally solid.
Well-wrought work strongly seasoned with polemic.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-40916-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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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