Though folktales made their literary debut in Italy a century before Perrault appeared in France, the country produced no Brothers Grimm—no master-compiler of popular tales as told. And it's this lack of a "readable master collection" that Calvino set out to remedy in adapting these 200 tales from 19th-century regional compilations. The bad news is that the renderings—at least in English—are absolutely flat: without spirit, pacing, flavor, style. (One is inclined to blame the translator who commits a rhyme like "Perle Pete,/ Pass me a pear/ With your little paw!/ I mean it, don't guffaw,/ My mouth waters, I swear, I swear!" Or uses such sloppy colloquialisms as "he was dying to get married.") There is also no storytelling guile: tale after tale begins, dully, "there was once a king who had three sons"—or "three daughters"—and it's only the exception that starts, seductively, "There was once a miserly king, so miserly that he kept his only daughter in the garret for fear someone would ask for her hand in marriage and thus oblige him to provide her with a dowry." And the monotony of the telling only accentuates the repetitiveness of the situations and the motifs—which is itself accentuated by the regional grouping (a maiden not only poses as a youth twice in 25 pages, she is each time subjected to the same tests). On the other hand, it is amusing to see the regional variants of "The Untamed Wife"; or how—differently—a princess fashions her own Prince Charming in the north (out of gold and jewels) and the south (out of flour and sugar). And there are a number of selections that are both sly and special to their locales—like the story of the Florentine who traveled so that he could return to Florence with something to talk about; or the earthy tale—one of several such from Friuli—of Jesus' and St. Peter's revenge on the woman who denied them hospitality (promised that, like her generous neighbor, she would do all day "whatever you begin doing this morning," she unwittingly rushed to "relieve herself" before sitting down to spin). A comprehensive and representative assemblage, then, for those with a specialized interest, but not on a par with the old Borzoi or ongoing Pantheon national collections for out-and-out pleasure.
Pub Date: Sept. 2, 1980
ISBN: 0156454890
Page Count: 804
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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