Too fussy and detailed for the casual reader, too amateurish for the scholar, this curious collaboration between novelist Gardner (completed just before his fatal motorcycle crash in 1982) and English professor Maier (SUNY, Brockport), with help from Assyriologist Richard A. Henshaw (Colgate Rochester Div. School), is nonetheless a thoroughly engaging work. What to do with Gilgamesh? The late Akkadian version (written ca. 1600-1000 B.C.) is clearly the best, but it's riddled with lacunae, some of which can be filled or partially elucidated by the Sumerian, Old Babylonian, Hittite, or Assyrian versions. Gardner-Maier translate everything from the twelve tablets of the epic, even when that means printing long stretches of unintelligible fragments like, ". . . land of Shamash, exposed to the sun/ . . . world-wide (?)/ . . . alabaster/ official exposed. . . ." Gardner was responsible for the final form of the text. His language is bold, vigorous, unashamedly colloquial, with none of the usual biblical-Homeric echoes: "I will show you Gilgamesh the joy-woe man./ Gaze at him—observe his face—/ beautiful in manhood, well-hung,/ his whole body filled with sexual glow." Maier provides a lot of generally useful notes, including such indispensable items as Siduri's advice to Gilgamesh ("let your belly be full,/ Make merry day and night," etc.) from the Old Babylonian. The end result is at once richer and more distracting than the highly readable "homogenized" prose retelling by Nancy Sandars, more vivid and cumbersome than Herbert Mason's verse translation. Given the vast linguistic and historical gulf separating us from its sources, any hope for a "definitive" Gilgamesh is doomed from the outset. But any intelligent effort to popularize that enigmatic primeval masterpiece is more than welcome.
Pub Date: Oct. 5, 1984
ISBN: 0394740890
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1984
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
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
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