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NOTEBOOKS 1942-1951

Name: NOTEBOOKS 1942-1951
Author: Albert Camus
ISBN: 1569249679

by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

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Are the journals of writers really significant? One thinks of Goethe or Gide and the answer is an automatic yes. One reads the second volume of Camus' Notebooks: 1942-1951 and , alas, no definite opinion is reached. The first entry offers a Nietzsche quotation: "Whatever does not kill me strengthens me. " And Camus adds: "Yes , but... how painful it is to dream of happiness." Here's the last entry (and by now Camus is 37): "Any fulfillment is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher fulfillment." Such is the nature of progress. Camus died young, relatively speaking. It is customary to think of him as the conscience of an age, and for page after page we are confronted with moral concerns, moral imperatives, and the pressure of events: the Resistance, the Cold War, the themes of Exile and of Absurdity, the question of Ideology. We learn of the philosophic and personal preoccupations behind The Stranger, Sisyphus, Caligula, The Rebel; we get snatches of the existentialist temper within Parisian circles; we view the dramatic break with Marleau-Ponty and Sartre; we follow Camus' political quest, his quarrel with Marxist abstractions, his hatred of totalitarianism. Fully acquainted with modernist negativity, he sought Mediterranean reasonableness, classical "lucidity," and- can it be denied?- romantic individualism. In The Rebel he stated: "Analysis of revolt leads at least to the suspicion that there is a human nature, as the Greeks thought, and contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought. " No wonder he was in conflict with Sartre; actually, he was in conflict with "the age." The appeal of Camus—as the Notebooks show over and over—is a nostalgic one. We respond not to his intellectual, rigor, but to his heroic invocation. In a dehumanized era he held to "boyish" ideals, to giving to life courage, beauty, style.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 1569249679

Page Count: 274

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1965

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
COMMITTED WRITINGS
by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith

- BOOK REVIEW
PERSONAL WRITINGS
by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien

- BOOK REVIEW
ALGERIAN CHRONICLES
by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.