Industrious novelist John Updike has rounded up another collection of verse, and lo! in this medium he grows serious even while his novels turn into "entertainments." (He has a poem about this: "The Jolly Greene Giant.") Some themes recur: things spat out (mouse-bones from owls, delicately, in "Dream and Reality"; Harvard College and its graduates, amusingly, in the Phi Beta Kappa Poem for 1973), the relation of cog to chain, and, always, insomnia. Updike has two voices in verse: flat, prosy, non-metaphoric—and bouncy, jingly, syllabic. Part I of Tossing and Turning is grave and unadorned, what critics of 16th-century poetry call "drab." Some of this reaches back to the Olinger days, as in "Leaving Church Early": "how busy we were forgiving—/ we had no time, of course, we have no time/ to do all the forgiving that we must do." In Part II, Updike resumes the lighthearted voice he used so well in The Carpentered Hen, Telephone Poles, and Midpoint, but self-pity slips in. "Authors' Residences: After Visiting Hartford," compares his own modest accommodations to the grander houses of Mark Twain and Wallace Stevens. "Writers, know your place/before it grows too modest to be known" . . . . One wonders, still, on what principle poets divide their volumes; what distinguishes Updike's Part III? It contains some of the book's best poems (and the sexiest) but some light verse too. Perhaps they are the ones the author likes best. Each reader will make his own choice.
Pub Date: May 1, 1977
ISBN: 0233969438
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1977
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
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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