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LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JACK ENGLE

Name: LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JACK ENGLE
Author: Walt Whitman
ISBN: 978-1-60938-510-1

by Walt Whitman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 17, 2017

Of great literary-historical interest, mostly because of its author and provenance but also for its treatment of...

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Long-unknown, originally pseudonymous novel by the canonical American poet, who incorporated some of its themes into his nascent poetic cycle, Leaves of Grass.

Using techniques of data analysis and a Nicholson Baker–esque devotion to yellowed newsprint, literary scholar Zachary Turpin—who previously uncovered Whitman’s self-help book, Manly Health and Training—here revives an 1852 serial novel by Whitman, who, he writes, published it in "similar secrecy." Whether embarrassed by it we cannot say, but Whitman’s aspirational tale of the orphan Jack Engle is solid enough, if obviously and heavily influenced by Charles Dickens and sprinkled with period didacticism: “New York is a progressive city, of vast resources; but in nothing is its energy more perceptible than in its juvenile population proper—their culture and their beginning early.” Honest and always striving, Jack is a good boy dealt a bad hand in life, helped along by the poor and struggling, by clerks and errand boys and foundlings. The story anticipates by more than a decade the rags-to-riches yarns of Horatio Alger, but unlike Alger, Whitman finds little to admire in the upper crust. The heavy in the tale is a grasping lawyer, meaningfully named Covert, who wants nothing more than to undo the legal shield a prescient client has built around his daughter, soon to be alone in the world, in order “to put certain checks on Covert’s movements, and effect, to some extent, a superior control over that cunning villain.” Lusting after the damsel's inheritance though supposedly a good Quaker, Covert is villainous indeed. Can Jack save the day? Formulaic and studded with stock figures such as the “pretty Jewess,” Whitman’s tale could not end otherwise. But is it any good? Suffice it to say that in terms of sheer storytelling power, Melville, Twain, and James need not worry about being demoted in the pantheon of 19th-century American literature.

Of great literary-historical interest, mostly because of its author and provenance but also for its treatment of contemporary social themes.

Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-60938-510-1

Page Count: 180

Publisher: Univ. of Iowa

Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
EVERY HOUR, EVERY ATOM
by Walt Whitman ; edited by Zachary Turpin & Matt Miller

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

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Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.