Like a brainier Seinfeld, Gass can write about nothing in particular and about everything, in essays humorous and arch,...
Essays on writers, writing, and contemporary culture by a master of the form.
Preternaturally sensitive, at home in many languages and historical periods, Gass (Reading Rilke, 1999, etc.) only occasionally reminds his readers how much smarter he is than the average philosopher, novelist, or translator. (He is accomplished in all three areas.) These essays are most often amiable digressions into territory most people don’t spend much time exploring: the meaning of the city in literature, say, with a nod to one of his favorite writers about cities, Italo Calvino; or the making of lists as an expression of consciousness and as a literary form (does a list, he wonders, “possess an isomorphic formality with elements outside itself?”); or the origin of true innovations in fiction, where innovations “are nearly always formal,” meaning “the expression of style at the level of narrative structure and fictional strategy”; or—particularly timely—the chilling effects of Islamic fundamentalism on literature: “Fundamentalists will not rest, for to rest, as with a cyclist, is to fall; to rest may be to realize that their light comes from a faraway star, that their mode of life has been dead for a long time, and the world in which they are busy killing and constraining is already a bier into which they, with their miseries, have been born.” Only infrequently in these essays, many born as occasional pieces or lectures, does Gass say the expected thing, as when, for instance, he reminds his readers that the craft of writing, like any other craft, requires lots of exercise. More often, he views the world idiosyncratically, spilling out fresh gems at every turn.
Like a brainier Seinfeld, Gass can write about nothing in particular and about everything, in essays humorous and arch, complex and accessible—and always good fun.Pub Date: March 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-41257-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
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
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