A brilliant idea dullishly done, as Rosenberg (ed., Testimony, 1989; trans., The Book of J, 1990) asks 23 well-known novelists, poets, and literary critics to name their earliest life-changing movie—and then to sit through it again today via videocassette. The job finds many of Rosenberg's contributors recalling the theaters and neighborhoods where the first viewing took place—a theme that gets tiresome. Critic Harold Bloom takes the zany approach, however, choosing W.C. Fields's glorious The Fatal Glass of Beer, a 20-minute short that so knocked him out on first viewing that he had to be carried out of the theater for a drink and missed the main feature. Bloom, of course, recognizes his opportunity to enthuse about ``the aesthetics of outrage'' he finds embodied in the farce and compares Fields's film more than favorably with Titus Andronicus and Gravity's Rainbow. Which hints at a flaw in perhaps half of the contributors, who tend to overblow their themes. Meg Wolitzer, though, does well in recalling Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt as the first picture ever to reveal the confusions of a real adolescent girl faced with a male world, while Joyce Carol Oates on the ``cinematically immortal'' and ``mythopoetic'' figure of Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning's version of Dracula wavers between real feeling and ground-out academicism. Perhaps the most moving single moment in the book is Philip Lopate's description of taking a girlfriend to see Carl Dreyer's Ordet, with its audacious climactic resurrection scene in a which an atheist Danish farmer's dead wife sits up in her coffin and holds out her arms to him: Lopate cries and his girlfriend punches him. ``You see, you can take it in films, but you can't take it in life!'' she says. Other contributors include Jayne Anne Phillips on The Premature Burial, Russell Banks on Bambi, Leonard Michaels on Gilda, and Leslie Epstein on The Devil in Miss Jones. Too heavy-handed, too archetypal by half.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-670-84087-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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