A thoughtful study of the work of Dennis Potter, arguably the finest writer ever to come out of television. The gifted British writer is probably best known to American audiences for Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, strikingly original miniseries combining darkly perceptive psychological drama with lip-synched popular songs of the ’40s and ’40s. But these shows were just a fraction of the remarkable work accomplished by Potter in his troubled life. As painted by Gilbert, Potter was an unhappy, often bitter man, whose lifelong battle with psoriatic arthopathy, an agonizing skin disease, was portrayed literally in The Singing Detective and figuratively in the isolation and suffering of many of his characters. Gilbert, a television producer as well as journalist, gives a vivid picture of the British television and film worlds Potter moved in but is less successful in portraying his personal world. Indeed, Potter’s private life all but vanishes after chapters on hgrets that the book, published in England in 1995, has not been updated for its American publication to include analyses of those plays produced after Potter’s death. More “Work” than “Life,” Gilbert’s book will provide much enlightenment for Potter devotees, but the definitive biography of this gifted artist is still to be written. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 10, 1998
ISBN: 0-87951-872-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
Close encounters with Cervidae, from soup to nuts, biological to behavioral to metaphysical, by Nelson (The Island Within, 1989). ``I'm not sure when I became obsessed with deer,'' Nelson admits, but obsessed he is. And he was interested, as a cultural anthropologist, in how the rest of America related to the burgeoning number of deer, so he set out to take their measure in the modern landscape. What he found was not particularly earth- shaking: Some folks love them, some hate them, each and every one has familiar points to make: Deer are sentient beings possessed of grace, loveliness, and innocence, and they ought to be left alone; deer are pests whose overpopulation has led to crop destruction, the jeopardization of rare plant species, not to mention the occasional human erased when 250 pounds of venison come through the windshield, and they ought to be deeply culled. Nelson gives all points of view a fair hearing. Though he is often content to commune with whitetails and blacktails and mules on an unthreatening eyeball-to-eyeball level, he makes it clear he is also a subsistence hunter. After making the case for hunt saboteurs (folks who sally forth to thwart the hunting crowd), he takes a strong pro-hunt position, albeit a rarefied one: He exhorts hunters to treat their quarry with humility and respect; to hunt with skill, knowledge, ethics, and judgment, as Nelson learned while living with Inupiaq Eskimos and Koyukon Indians—the consequences will reverberate beneficially throughout the soul of the community. Nelson's writing can be painfully sentimental (``Lovely deer, you are always in my heart, dancing down the dawn into the light'') and his landscapes overly detailed, yet he can also be crisp and succinct, his arguments cogently tendered. A compelling, multifaceted, and broadly curious portrait of the deer among us.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-40522-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
Advances the compelling message that we have much to learn from orangutans as their numbers diminish.
Up-close encounters with a fascinating group of people and the orangutans with whom they share their lives.
In 2001, at the age of 50, Thompson (Journalism/Thompson Rivers Univ.; A River Rat’s Guide to the Thousand Islands, 1996, etc.) made his first trip to Borneo where he visited sick and orphaned orangutans. Spending “hours and hours” at the clinic proved to be a life-changing experience, as the author came to realize that “a creature like this can think and feel like you do.” He watched veterinarian Rosa Maria Garriga work tirelessly with the orangutans. He learned the story of the famous Kusasi, who was orphaned and taken captive in the late ’70s, then rescued and taken to a camp. Travelling between the bush and the camp, Kusasi thrived to become the dominating orangutan in the area. One of the disputed issues among primatologists is whether humans should act as surrogate mothers for orphaned orangutans, who normally stay with their mothers until they are seven. Thompson met several primatologists who mothered orphaned apes with mixed success—some of the apes became overattached, jealous and ultimately dangerous or unable to cope in the wild. The author gives due credit to famed primatologists Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, who “perceived different aspects of apes because they saw them as individuals with an emotional life.” Thompson ponders the unique intelligence of orangutans, who appear to have the IQ of a three-and-a-half-year-old, yet don’t have a child’s mind.
Advances the compelling message that we have much to learn from orangutans as their numbers diminish.Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3133-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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