In her preface, Charters aims to celebrate “the diversity of voices involved with this literary movement as it developed in...
More than 700 pages of pure Beat pleasure.
A one-woman Beat industry and an anthologizing demon, Charters (English/Univ. of Connecticut) has edited several collections of Kerouac and other writers of the era (The Portable Beat Reader, not reviewed, etc.). With all her experience, one would expect judicious editorial decisions, clear and accessible introductions to the material, and an expansive breadth of vision—and, once again, she does not disappoint. She lays out a feast of Beat-related belles lettres, criticism, and commentary, dividing her collection into four units: “Writers on the Beat Generation (1948–2000),” “Afterword, Panel with Women Writers of the Beat Generation” (featuring perspectives by Carolyn Cassady, Charters, Joyce Johnston, Hettie Jones, Eileen Kaufman, and Joanna McClure), “Swinging Syllables Beatnik Dictionary,” and “Chronology of Selected Books, Magazines, Films, and Recordings Relating to Beat Generation Authors (1950–2000).” Throw in Charters’s preface, introduction, bibliography, and index, and the resulting chunky collection of Beat voices and commentary does full justice to the writers and their literature. The big boys of Beat make their obligatory appearance, of course, but Charters refrains from weighing the anthology too heavily in their favor by omitting materials she has previously anthologized. If you’ve been hankering to know what William Carlos Williams thought of Ginsberg’s “Howl” or how Mary McCarthy reacted to Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, Charters gives these authors—and many more—in their own trenchant words.
In her preface, Charters aims to celebrate “the diversity of voices involved with this literary movement as it developed in post–World War II America.” Mission accomplished, and admirably so.Pub Date: June 5, 2001
ISBN: 0-14-100151-8
Page Count: 714
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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