This compact volume offers an aesthetically robust and spiritually poignant reflection on Jewish visitation stones.
In this nonfiction work, Leo, Mendelsohn, and Allen explore traditions of Jewish remembrance in photographs and prose.
You would be forgiven if, looking at Leo’s photographs in this volume, you mistook them for an abstract exercise in geometric form. Printed in black and white with rich contrast, the stones that are their subject have a tendency to morph: The smooth, mottled white of one rock emerges from darkness like an egg; another pebble, reflected in the granite on which it is sitting, smudges and blurs as if seen through water. With a close, insistent gaze trained upon knobbed surfaces, the camera turns crevices and bits of grit into mysterious landscapes, small rocks opening into expansive worlds. The framing essays remind us that these stones are elements in a human narrative. Placed on gravestones, the rocks participate in a long-standing Jewish tradition, marking an act of remembrance and serving as a point of connection to the memories of deceased loved ones. Offering biblical context and philosophical ruminations, the closing essay by Allen suggests that these stones are symbols of permanence, operating as “a material response to that which is no longer a tangible relationship, imprinting the memory of a loved one within us.” But, as Mendelsohn’s opening essay points out, stones can decay as well: “Our desire that the memory of who we once were should endure beyond the natural span of our lives,” the author writes, “is made more poignant by the fact that stone, as hard as it is, can stop ‘signifying’ in the way we had intended.” In this sense, the photographs are themselves an act of commemoration, not only of the human relationships that they represent, but also of these bits of matter at a single moment, not yet changed by wind and rain and time itself.
This compact volume offers an aesthetically robust and spiritually poignant reflection on Jewish visitation stones.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781735762982
Page Count: 80
Publisher: MW Publications
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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