A slovenly, vicious biography of singer/guitarist/songwriter Reed, whose brilliant '60s work with the Velvet Underground and solo career merit more sensitive scrutiny. Andy Warhol junkies will be familiar with the first part of the story, which has been told more skillfully elsewhere: Reed grew up on Long Island, studied at Syracuse University with poet Delmore Schwartz, worked briefly as a contract songwriter for a cheesy record company, and in 1965 fell in with John Cale, Maureen Tucker, and fellow Syracuse alumnus Sterling Morrison to form the trailblazing Velvet Underground. Warhol's patronage brought the Velvets notoriety, but they sold few records, and Reed left the band in 1970. His subsequent solo output has ranged from the sublime to the inexplicable (Metal Machine Music was an hour of white noise); his songs have documented his fluctuating sexuality and drug use and his apparent straightening out on both counts. Bockris (Keith Richards, 1992, etc.) opens luridly with an account of Reed receiving shock treatments at age 17 to cure him of homosexual tendencies, but Reed's psyche eludes him; Bockris repeatedly refers to an obviously flippant (unsourced) comment by Reed that he had eight personalities as if it were a psychiatric diagnosis. Reed is portrayed as unrelentingly cruel and selfish, tormenting his family, friends, bandmates, and romantic partners. In Bockris's eagerness to quote enemies and bad reviews, he omits basic facts. (His source list says his own book about the Velvets was ``indispensable''; Reed did not speak to him for this book.) And Bockris is no prose stylist: ``Now, at the end of the troubled, trembling 1993, he had plummeted from being one of theif not themost venerated, for all of the right reasons, figures in his field to coming across like a small-minded wart.'' Bockris's animosity and prurience produce no insights into either the man or his music.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80366-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
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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