A subtle pleasure for lovers of the printed word, even if they order books from the leviathan.
A set of lively literary essays by Barcelona-based novelist and journalist Carrión.
Even though one of the essays is called “Against Bibliophilia,” this is just the sort of book that bibliophiles—to say nothing of bibliomaniacs—will enjoy. By bibliophilia, the author, who picks up where he left off in Bookshops: A Reader’s History, means the sort of worshipful accumulation of the exotic and expensive—and not just the accumulation of books that forge a person’s soul, but also “a democratic library, ruled by a love of reading, a wish to escape or a desire for knowledge, beyond the masquerade of wrappings that may be a sign of artisanal craft, art, and cultural tradition, but are also a distraction from what really matters: content.” The title essay is suggestive of a different problem: the reduction of books to mere commodities, sold alongside laundry soap and TVs by “the world’s biggest hypermarket behind a huge smokescreen shaped like a library.” This would be OK if we were robots and books had no meaning. They do, of course. Carrión’s essays are broad-ranging and don’t always quite cohere, though if some seem to be padding, most contribute to an appreciation of books and literary culture as things quite unlike any other. Highlights include the author’s meditation, of a sort practiced by bibliophilic writers ever since Walter Benjamin, on how to organize a library (he proposes a trifold division into “friends, acquaintances, future contacts”); a somewhat gloomy visit with Argentine Canadian collector and librarian Alberto Manguel, whose 40,000 volumes were comfortably housed in a French farmhouse until he fell afoul of the Sarkozy government; and a scholarly detective story that hinges on the writer and book collector Curzio Malaparte’s villa on the island of Capri, familiar to fans of Godard and Neruda and beloved of “writers, translators, and architects.”
A subtle pleasure for lovers of the printed word, even if they order books from the leviathan.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-303-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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