A wide variety of quality writing, both reflective and reported.
Plenty of good reading in this 25th annual anthology, though it extends the definition of “essay” past the point of category.
In the foreword, series editor Robert Atwan addresses the technological changes that have, or haven’t, affected the essay: “What are blogs but today’s version of essays in disguise?” This volume’s editor, Vanity Fair contributor Hitchens (Hitch-22, 2010, etc.), offers an economic consideration that the year “was not a healthy one for the sorts of magazines that take the risk of publishing the essay form.” (The magazines represented in this installment include mostly the usual suspects, like the New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic and the New York Review of Books, with only one real surprise: the Alaska Quarterly Review.) But what is that essay form? One of the pieces, “A Rake’s Progress” by Matt Labash, is a fairly standard—and very good—feature profile of former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry. Another, “Speaking in Tongues” by Zadie Smith, is a reprint of a lecture she delivered at the New York Public Library. James Wood’s concluding “A Fine Range” is an extended book review of a couple of recent collections of George Orwell’s essays. Among the pieces that would be more conventionally classified as essays are illuminating appreciations of John Updike (by Ian McEwan) and William F. Buckley (by Garry Wills). Jane Kramer’s “Me, Myself, and I,” about reading Montaigne, cuts to the heart of the essay and the essence of coming to terms with life and death through writing, while Brian Doyle’s short, sharp “Irreconcilable Dissonance” uses divorce to make provocative comments on marriage. Other notable contributors include David Sedaris, Steven Pinker, Walter Isaacson and Phillip Lopate.
A wide variety of quality writing, both reflective and reported.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-39451-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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