This will be a sad last sentimental trek for those who remember Kerouac as their generation's oracular road guide. Written in his last years when he'd broken with the friends and scenes that fed his earlier novels, this rather painfully suggests the price he paid to drop back in or perhaps the imaginative exhaustion that led him to that choice, It's the story, for want of a better word, of a ten-year-old black North Carolina farm boy named Pictorial Review Jackson — a fair sample of the cute spot effects Kerouac was going in for at this point — told from Pic's own point of view in an insistent if not quite recognizable dialect. When his good old Grandpa gets sick he's taken to live with Aunt Gastonia where blind Grandpa Jelky tries to slap a curse on him; then his brother Slim, awfully innocuous for a hipster horn-player, comes and with all the good will in the world kidnaps him to New York. There he lives for a time in a bourgeoisified version of a penniless, jobless Harlem household. It's a tough life, sure, but nothing to get offensive about — just momentarily happy or sad as they take off again, to California, skating over a road that's almost worn through to the yellow brick. For old times' sake.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1971
ISBN: 2710303477
Page Count: 153
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
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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