Erudite, stylish, and lively, steeped in first-hand experience and a pleasure to read.
Diverse collection of essays on topics ranging from 18th-century explorers to monasteries and butterflies, all of which Merwin makes fascinating.
His prose, glinting and gracious, pulses with the warmth that comes from being truly captivated by a subject. At times poet/novelist Merwin (The Lost Upland, 1992, etc.) writes like an eye roving the surroundings: “I approached Xenophontos from behind: it faces the sea. Ruined stables extending back into the trees. Masonry built of boulders: gray, russet, black. Lichens.” At other times he’s more leisurely and thorough, for example in his profile of Sydney Parkinson, who circumnavigated the globe on Cook’s Endeavour, and in his musings about the ill-fated expedition of French explorer La Pérouse, which tie together the French town of Albi and the Hawaiian island of Maui as neatly as a birthday present. The collection starts with an affectionate remembrance of George Kirstein, publisher of The Nation, with whom Merwin had a lifelong, at times tattered relationship; the essay ranges over sailing, aspects of emotional remoteness, and Kirstein's gradual distancing from the rebelliousness of youth. In one piece, Merwin grabs the reader's attention from the first sentence (“A few yards away, in the tall fir trees beyond a shallow fold that ran up the mountainside, there were thirty-five million butterflies”); in others, he sidles along in an oblique manner, slowly getting at the mystery of Neanderthals in the valley of the Dordogne or the way the ruins of a royal Hawaiian summer house speak of the devastating loss of species on those islands. He also recreates a time, to the envy of contemporary readers, when you could go exploring, knowing there would be an abandoned barn in which to sleep, when you could take to Mt. Athos on foot and with rucksack, visiting the monasteries as one should, via a slow crawl.
Erudite, stylish, and lively, steeped in first-hand experience and a pleasure to read.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59376-030-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
