Persistent and persuasive, like listening to that friend with the smartest take on just about any subject under the sun.
The true confessions of a cultural obsessive turned author.
After turning his love of SF and detective fiction into an early career as a promising but little-known novelist, Lethem (Amnesia Moon, 1995) burst into the mainstream with Motherless Brooklyn (1999), a tale that married Brooklyn childhood with detective story. Lethem has since repeatedly mined the place of his upbringing in fiction (The Fortress of Solitude) and essays (the New Yorker, Granta), like those collected here. The best thing about Lethem’s nonfiction is his willingness, in the midst of all his writing on culture (since most of these pieces are about books, films, and comics that he loves, and why) to cop to his sometimes elitist and obsessive-compulsive behavior while at the same time giving ample evidence of his knowledge. “Defending The Searchers” is a case in point, a hilarious account of Lethem’s years of relentlessly defending the film to those who thought it outdated and racist, even when he wasn’t sure he liked it himself, being so convinced of its importance in the canon. The title essay, about the roundly despised and now mostly forgotten proto-Beat author Edward Dahlberg, is less successful, perhaps because it’s less personal. This is definitely not the case for “You Don’t Know Dick” and “13, 1977, 21,” which are, respectively, a persuasively honest argument for the greatness of Philip K. Dick and an accounting of the 21 times Lethem saw Star Wars, during the summer when his family fell apart. The masterpiece here, however, is “Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn,” a warm and richly researched history of the Brooklyn subway stop that’s a perfectly realized slice of urban mythology, with everything in it from a thumbnail history of the subway system to the cult film The Warriors.
Persistent and persuasive, like listening to that friend with the smartest take on just about any subject under the sun.Pub Date: March 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-51217-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
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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