by Wendy Lesser ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2002
Uneven, but with enough stunning moments to make this a must for avid readers.
Now nearing 50, literary critic Lesser (The Amateur, 1999, etc.) revisits books she loved in her youth and asks: What kind of person was I then? What have I become? To what extent—if any—did literature contribute?
The author declares early on that “vertigo” is perhaps the best word to describe her new encounters with old literary friends from Don Quixote to A Hazard of New Fortunes, so it’s only appropriate that she ends this engaging volume with an essay about Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which she has seen many times and greatly admires. In a tone that varies from playful to pedantic, earnest to nostalgic to analytical, Lesser proceeds to reread and react to works she selected by applying several criteria: it must be “strong”; she must remember her first reading of it; and she must derive from it some sort of fresh insight or experience. Some books do not surprise by their appearance here (The Education of Henry Adams, The Tempest, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Paradise Lost); others do (I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, and Black Dogs, by Ian McEwan). Lesser declares that neither Anna Karenina nor Middlemarch retains its magic for her; she decides not to reread Catcher in the Rye, and she now finds Caliban more appealing than she once did, Prospero less so. Some of her observations are riveting, as when she says that Don Quixote and Huck Finn are in fundamental ways more alive for us than either Cervantes or Twain, and her thoughts on The Winter’s Tale are illuminating. But not every insight is a revelation. Lesser labels Richard II “relatively obscure” and flaunts her résumé like a nervous job applicant, making certain we notice her years at Harvard, Cambridge, Berkeley, and the Columbia School of Journalism. Oh, by the way, she’s read Howells in the bathtub in a Venice hotel.
Uneven, but with enough stunning moments to make this a must for avid readers.Pub Date: May 7, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-08293-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
Share your opinion of this book
More by Wendy Lesser
BOOK REVIEW
by Wendy Lesser
BOOK REVIEW
by Wendy Lesser
BOOK REVIEW
by Wendy Lesser
by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Ludwig Bemelmans
BOOK REVIEW
developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
BOOK REVIEW
by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
BOOK REVIEW
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Share your opinion of this book
More by Charlayne Hunter-Gault
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.