A mostly inscrutable collection of personal epiphanies by the late Cuban novelist and belletrist (Cobra, 1974, etc.). Sarduy's preface hardly clarifies the elliptical fragments that follow: ``They are traces left by things ephemeral.... They constitute a record of things thatsometimes by chanceonce put me in touch with something.'' The brief chapters, most only a few pages long, plumb the author's Cuban youth, his departure for Paris in 1960, his adulthood in France, his wide travels before his death from AIDS in 1993. Sarduy describes a few of his scars; a few of his friendships; the banks of the Ganges at Benares; the iconography of the soul's escape from the dying body; archaic stone monoliths in Brittany; a sexual encounter with a stranger; some memories of paintings (including the huge image of Christ's scourging, seen en route to the Louvre atop a truck, that inspired the book's title); and the atmosphere of Tangier. He also mentions the war in Afghanistan and the Mexico City earthquake, taking horror and delight, respectively, in the behaviors of people under duress. Sarduy juxtaposes memories and images but usually doesn't communicate what makes these combinations revelatory to him; worst of all, when he analyzes his epiphanies, he does so using the oblique, tired jargon of semiotics: ``gesture,'' ``hieroglyphic,'' ``simulacra,'' even ``hermeneutic inadequacy.'' The author was, unsurprisingly, a pal of Roland Barthes, who appears here in one of two memoirs about drinking at the CafÇ de Flore (Bloody Marys for Sarduy, black coffee for Barthes). In fact, much of the book seems to revolve around Sarduy's imbibing, which must have been prodigious; in one early passage, he muses revealingly about how he tries to reproduce the intoxication of the creative act through alcohol. Maybe drunkenness had something to do with the failure of this elusive work.
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 1-56279-075-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
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
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
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