A 30-year treasury of columns, essays, reviews, and reports from Pulitzer Prize-winner Kempton, a New York Newsday columnist and New York Review of Books contributor who richly deserves wide notice. In pieces from the above-mentioned publications as well as Harper's, Esquire, and the pre-Murdoch New York Post, among others, Kempton presents an archive of observed history. His inimitable, almost classical, style, grounded in humanism, is elegantly precise, dispatching subjects in a phrase. He calls Elia Kazan's apologies before McCarthy's witch hunt ``an acceptance of humiliation for the sake of survival in a confiscatory tax bracket.'' On lost 1960s radical Jane Alpert: ``She did not so much rise to the challenge of her time as yield to infection by its vagrant air.'' On El Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani's views: ``about as far from the center as a statesman can get without reinvoking the Fugitive Slave Act.'' Kempton knows history, and tragedy, and literature, finding Joseph Conrad his best guide to Central America and Anton Chekhov his cicerone to the Soviets. He brings us Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Huey Newton; Machiavelli, the Mafia, and Michael Milken; Roy Cohn, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon. His columns from New York present Gotham's indignities and ironies: public indifference to gay- bashing; the demise of a junkie ``incautious with gossip''; an auction of Marilyn Monroe's memorabilia. For anyone interested in journalism, politics, and history, or in the observations of a clear and skeptical eye, nearly every piece has its delights.
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8129-2294-8
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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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