Bold criticism from a knowledgeable, bright writer who would rather declare than question, speculate, or wonder.
A collection of previous published essays/reviews about writers ranging from Samuel Pepys to Sinclair Lewis and beyond.
Allen is not a timorous or uncertain critic. The author of a previous collection, Twentieth-Century Attitudes (not reviewed), does not herself lack attitude. For works she likes she employs superlatives: e.g., Boswell’s biography of Johnson is “the greatest biography in the English language.” (Has she read them all?) For works or writers she does not admire, “shit” is the Most Favored Noun. William Saroyan, she writes, was “a world-class, king-sized, copper-bottomed Shit, with a capital S.” Lord Byron, too, was “one of the great shits of history.” Most of these putative reviews (whose original dates of publication should have been noted) first appeared in The New Criterion, which permitted Allen much space to expatiate upon the book under consideration as well as its context. These pieces tend to have a similar organization. For example, in a review of D. J. Taylor’s Thackeray biography, Allen spends most of her 19 pages summarizing and analyzing Thackeray’s life, work, and reputation; she confines her comments about Taylor to a handful of sentences. Books about Laurence Sterne, Wilkie Collins, and others receive much the same treatment in much the same fashion. Her New York Times Book Review pieces are briefer but likewise focused on the content of the book rather than its author’s capabilities or achievements. These also feature Allen’s characteristic certainty. For instance, in an assessment (somewhat altered from its original Times appearance) of Brenda Wineapple’s biography of Hawthorne, Allen declares that high-school students should not read The Scarlet Letter—too difficult—but should instead read The Blithedale Romance, a dark, melancholic novel featuring suicide and disillusion that she bizarrely characterizes as “a delightful send-up of the [Brook Farm] commune and its pretensions.”
Bold criticism from a knowledgeable, bright writer who would rather declare than question, speculate, or wonder.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2004
ISBN: 1-56663-595-0
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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
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