A thoughtful, modest essay by the prolific British author.
A slim, essay-length book celebrates the connection between writer and reader.
In 1926, Woolf (1882-1941) shared some thoughts about reading with the girls of the Hayes Court Common school, in Kent, England. Included as the final essay in The Common Reader: Second Series (1932), the piece now appears on its own, bracketed by commentary by Sheila Heti, former interviews editor at the Believer and a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism, who offers an admiring, empathetic response to Woolf’s perspective. “I think,” writes Heti, “the essay came from Woolf’s displeasure in having to pass through the critics in order to reach her readers.” Woolf encouraged her listeners to read with openness and generosity and to come to literary works without preconceptions about their merit. “To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read,” Woolf said, “is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.” Reading widely—even books relegated to the “rubbish-heap” of literature—helps one develop discernment and appreciation. “Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing,” Woolf suggested, “is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words.” Rather than impose other readers’ standards, Woolf advised becoming an author’s “fellow worker and accomplice.” All readers, the girls in her audience included, exert influence on the creative spirit of the time: “The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work.” Heti agrees, sharing ways in which her writing has been shaped by early readers of works in progress. Art is not made by lone artists, Heti writes, but “always made in a community of peers.”
A thoughtful, modest essay by the prolific British author.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78627-752-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Laurence King
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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