A gorgeous memento mori from a singular writer.
Notes on dying from a man who did an excellent job of living.
Schjeldahl (1942-2022) was best known as an art critic, a role he held at the New Yorker right up until his death at the age of 80. He made the East Village his home for most of his life, but his roots were in the Midwest—a fact that perhaps explains why he was able to make art accessible without dumbing it down or pandering. The title essay was published after he was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. The author writes about his life in a discursive style that he has, as an elderly man facing death, surely earned, but these vignettes hang together and offer a portrait of a life spent in search of beauty in an era largely defined by cynicism. Always a keen observer, Schjeldahl manages the neat trick of seeming to place himself outside the frame even when he serves as his own subject. For example, he recounts winning a Guggenheim grant to pen a memoir that never happened because he used that money to buy a tractor—rather than time to write. Relating this story, he quotes Susan Sontag, whom he recounts meeting in another anecdote that seems more self-effacing than it is. This author knows his place in cultural history, and he wants us to remember it; he just doesn’t want to brag about it. The rest of this volume includes Schjeldahl’s final pieces for the New Yorker, many written during the global pandemic, a time when the author was uniquely equipped to talk about how we might think about art in the face of death. In the foreword, Steve Martin notes, “It’s easy to think you can write like Peter, intrepidly flinging words around, but it’s dangerous.”
A gorgeous memento mori from a singular writer.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781419773242
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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