The second volume of an ongoing translation of Satire's dense, immense biography and analysis of the young Flaubert. Sartre's thesis, expressed in highly complex format, is that Flaubert was something of a child genius, and that by reading the works of his extreme youth, the lover of his later works can recognize all of the future masterpieces, such as Madame Bovary, in embryo. This contradicts the pre-Sartreian belief that Flaubert was a late developer, in fact, the "family idiot." When such a complex text is translated, it should be asked for whom the job of Englishing is done. Even in English, Satire's arguments are sufficiently difficult to follow as to discourage the casual reader. Moreover, the interested investigator into Flaubert's early work had better know French, as almost none of it has been translated. Therefore, we are left with a large project that may well be of use to a limited number of scholars or either Sartre or of Flaubert. Otherwise, this fairly expensive volume cannot be tailed a "fun read" for those who are less deeply involved on a professional level. This caution slated, il is important lo stress that Cosman has continued her fluent job of translating what is occasionally an unfluent original. Despite his awkwardnesses of style, Sartre's is certainly one of the most stimulating recent works on Flaubert, largely because nothing embarrasses the critic. Even Flaubert's likely episodes of homosexuality in adolescence and later are given their full due here, with a description of a comrade's appreciating "the feminine charm emanating from Gustave's young body." The details of the carnal life of the novelist are only a part of the exceptionally thorough and all-inclusive approach that the author takes toward his fascinating subject. Illuminating, but more for specialists than for the general reader.
Pub Date: April 1, 1987
ISBN: 0226735192
Page Count: 646
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1987
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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