Mostly scattered testimonials: we may simply still be too close to allow the creative imagination to claim this territory...
A collage of responses to September 11, both original and reprinted, from the city with the highest concentration of literati in the world.
Editor Baer (German/NYU) had the very smart idea of exploiting the incredible talent pool of New York City writers to consecrate the attack on the World Trade Center. The hook is the correspondence between the number of “stories” in each tower and in the anthology. Baer has corralled quite a few well-known names, including Paul Auster, Lydia Davis, Samuel Delany, Vivian Gornick, and Jessica Hagedorn. Many of the pieces have a highly oblique relationship to the atrocity. David Jay Mirsky, for example, mixes a fleeting fragment of experience from that day with an allusive prose poem about the House of David that is, to say the least, recondite. Jonathan Ames contributes a tasteless and smarmy sexual memoir with the vaguest of connections to the attack. Mary Morris is more typical. She remains on topic, but her mini-memoir, which concerns teaching on that fatal day and learning one of her students has a relative who was killed at the site, is emotional without being particularly insightful. Tony Hiss gives a history lesson about the site and the way in which an unlovely piece of architecture, through the “slow, soft changes” of familiarity, was gradually assimilated into people’s total feeling for the city. A.M. Homes responds with an almost unadorned first-person account of the day. Richard Foreman creates a Beckett-like sketch of two nameless characters who talk about a “revelatory encounter” that is also a catastrophe. Amitav Ghosh’s piece about Frank and Nicole De Martini, architects who worked in the Tower, is notable for its lucid observations and tucked-in emotion (even though Frank died trying to save others); this seems the most interesting and affecting way to represent the atrocity at this point in time.
Mostly scattered testimonials: we may simply still be too close to allow the creative imagination to claim this territory yet.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2002
ISBN: 0-8147-9905-1
Page Count: 340
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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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