Again, combining metaphorical leaps with side-of-the-mouth aphorisms and plain-song, Dillard celebrates moments of spiritual comfort and unease—not in sustained meditations here (as in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or Holy the Firm), but in a variety of encounters with animals, stars, vegetation, and people. She watches a gloriously-described weasel ("a muscled ribbon") go for the throat; in the Ecuadorian jungle she sees a captured deer in agony; she recalls a Miami man who was burned horribly twice; and rather than try to reconcile these things with God's existence, she usually accepts them . . . as the way things are, as Mystery. God—or something—is vividly present, however, in a viewing (with screams) of the total solar eclipse: "It was as though an enormous, loping god in the sky had reached down and slapped the earth's face." And God is there in Dillard's frequent Silences: a silent field swirling with angels; the particular silence that fills the room of a man who has devoted his life to teaching a stone to talk. ("The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God's brooding over the face of the waters. . . .") But: is God there in church, in organized religion? That, again, is one of Dillard's preoccupations. So she encounters a little boy drilled in Fundamentalism, later ponders the anti-Darwinism (unnecessary, she thinks) of Creationists. And, in one of the longer pieces, Dillard sees a bumbling Catholic church service ("God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter") as analagous to the search-for-the-sublime of the Polar explorers: "What are the chances that God finds our failed impersonation of human dignity adorable? Or is he fooled? What odds do you give me?" Here, however, the metaphor is cruelly belabored. And, throughout, Dillard's sharp images occasionally slide over into elevated greeting-card verbiage, while her salutary undercutting remarks can quite often become precious. Still: a collection of meditations like polished stones-painstakingly worded, tough-minded yet partial to Mystery, and peerless when it comes to injecting larger resonances into the natural world.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1982
ISBN: 0060915412
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1982
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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