Of two biographies of Henry Miller to be published in the same month (see Robert Ferguson's Henry Miller, below), this is the easier, more flowing read, though not necessarily the better book. Both Dearborn and Ferguson will the same story from the same sympathetic viewpoint, with Ferguson giving greater detail, a denser page, and more cultural scene-setting. One might fear that Dearborn (Love in the Promised Land, 1988; Pocahontas's Daughters, 1985) will do a feminist hatchet job on the freewheeling satyr whose novels shooed in the sexual revolution (at least in print), but she remains open-spirited about Miller's seeing women in his novels—aside from his second wife, June—as so many vaginas. Dearborn indeed makes clear that Miller suffered heavily from a domineering Nordic mother and wives who victimized him, so much so that he barely knew a woman who wasn't a towering sneak or double-dealer. We follow him through his Brooklyn childhood and early failures as an unpublished novelist; his famed five years as a hiring-and-firing manager for Western Union; the explosively bloody crucifixion of his marriage to June ``Smith'' (born Juliet Edith Smerth); his bottom-dog decade of poverty in Paris that produced his greatest works (aside from Plexus), the shift of real-life, sex-hungry Henry Miller into his novels' fantasy hero, the endlessly priapic ``Henry Miller''; his years of begging in the wilderness of California's Big Sur country; the belated publication of his Tropic novels, banned in the States for 25 years after their first printings in Paris; his fight against being known as the ``King of Smut''—and his hopeless ties with later wives and man-eaters. Dearborn aptly compares Miller's literary life to Walt Whitman's, thinks that sex was an element in his writing that was ``a red herring that misled his readers for years. The theme of his greatest books is survival.'' Smooth, warm, and commendable.
Pub Date: May 8, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-67704-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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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