A carefully constructed memory palace almost as comfortable for its visitors as it is for its inhabitant.
Kittredge (Hole in the Sky, 1992, etc.) continues his explorations, identifying the ingredients of a good and worthy life as he mines them from recollections of his early years.
Exposure to the world and analysis of experience are not just antidotes to despair—they are ways of living, of helping us to attain a private understanding of our own stories and so a ration of freedom and happiness. Kittredge takes readers on a select tour of his experiences, from the early days with his father to those he shares today with his companion, Annick Smith, during which he is ever attentive to the resonant metaphors of daily life. Sometimes his descriptions can sound painfully studied, as if each word were a Claymore mine ready to compromise his rough poet image: “. . . tricksters and jazz next to manicured gardens in Kyoto, walled cities against wilderness, and island empires that evolve into commodified carnivals.” But more often his writing is richly contextualized, a dizzily inclusive response to experience (be it garnered in the caves at Lascaux or the Alhambra or the hills and swales of his Montana home) that swarms and rushes and finds no problem stirring into a discussion of, say, the roots and downsides of agriculture such elements as the Greek alphabet, violence among hunter-gatherers, the humanity that can be wrung from a hard life, and the greasy buckskins of John Colter. We can ignore the excesses, however, and tap into Kittredge’s abiding decency, his love of intimacy and the pleasures and rewards of giving, in a life in which “the great projects have to do with freedom from want, ignorance, disease, and despotisms, with a peaceful homeland thick with the textures of what is most beloved, and with tearing down the barricades between ourselves and liberty, pleasure, enfranchisement, release, and play.”
A carefully constructed memory palace almost as comfortable for its visitors as it is for its inhabitant.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-43752-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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