A Nobel Prize winner illuminates topics ranging from death and great writers to religion and myth, ethnicity and creativity, and much more. Canetti's (190594) prestige rests on an unusual assortment of books, from his one novel, Auto-da-FÇ, to the wide-ranging study of social anthropology, Crowds and Power, to a three-volume memoir published in the '70s. The language of Canetti's writing is German, reflecting his formative years in Vienna, but his background was multilingual and multinational; he spent his final decades in England—hence the title of this volume. Recent books from Canetti's pen (such as Agony of Flies, 1994) have been of the notebook genre, of which he was a master. Some might greet the new book as the last gasp of an old writer emptying scraps of paper from his desk drawers. But in fact these ``notes,'' which range from opaque jottings to incisively perceptive aphorisms, will strike the experienced reader of Canetti as a fine display of cerebral fireworks. Language and writing were the mode of his thought process. He did not put his thoughts into words; his thoughts were themselves a meteor shower of vivid words and phrases, sentences that seem to flash whole from his extraordinary mind. ``A great many ideas,'' as he puts it, ``want to remain comets.'' The comment embodies Canetti's enthusiasm for the fragment as form. Reading this volume could be likened to touring the workshop of a master sculptor. No piece is finished: Some seem abandoned, some seem in progress, some are scarcely recognizable, yet each exists for its own sake, and each bears the distinctive marks of the master's chisel. Canetti's touch is uncompromising in its authority, its unpretentious honesty, and its passion. This volume is composed as a gathering of fragments and as such will not please many. But the few will be grateful for Canetti's book and for Hargraves's exacting translation of it.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-22326-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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