A self-important grab bag of essays on art, sex, and writing by one of England's preeminent literary talents. Despite her professed admiration for Modernist giants such as Virginia Woolf, Winterson's (Art and Lies, p. 105, etc.) vision is essentially a Romantic one, tricked up with a few stylistic gimmicks to give it a high-gloss experimental veneer. Following in a long, proud tradition from Wordsworth to Eliot, Winterson uses these essays to propound aesthetic theories that, stripped to their essence, are nothing so much as celebrations and justifications of her own work. Still there is something both noble and fussily quaint about her high regard for art and ``the artist,'' her faith that they still hold an overwhelming importance: ``If we say that art, all art is no longer relevant to our lives, then we might at least risk the question `What has happened to our lives?' '' When she neglects her self-conscious stylings and self-preoccupation, when she doesn't try so hard for ecstasy and effrontery, Winterson can be a fine writer. These essays are decorated throughout with sensitive perceptions and beautifully nuanced phrasings (consider the title's subtle pun), but sooner or later she feels the need to be a WRITER again and begins stomping recklessly about her carefully arranged china shop. While we can't usually choose our intellectual influences, Winterson also reflects a particularly insular British kind of parochialism that does not seem to recognize any literature west of the Liffey and later than 1945. Strange for a writer who so strenuously—at least in these essays- -rejects realism and blindly following tradition: ``If prose- fiction is to survive it will have to do more than to tell a story. Fiction that is printed television is redundant fiction.'' Despite their occasional glimmerings, few of these essays measure up to even the briefest paragraphs from one of Winterson's novels.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-44644-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
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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