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MADAME DU DEFFAND AND HER WORLD

Name: MADAME DU DEFFAND AND HER WORLD
Author: Benedetta Craveri
ISBN: 1-56792-001-2

by Benedetta Craveri ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1994

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This biography of a lesser Madame de SÇvignÇ proves Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses was not merely a fictional study of sexual politics but an accurate portrait of aristocratic behavior in 18th- century France. Marie de Vichy-Champrond was born to a noble French family in 1696. But despite her high birth and convent education, Madame du Deffand (her married name) was, by Parisian social standards, a fallen woman by the age of 32. A divorcÇe known for her affairs, including a short-lived dalliance with the regent, the Duke of Orleans, that secured her a lifetime annuity, she spent over a decade redeeming her position by serving in the court of the Duchess of Maine and as a lover to the esteemed Charles-Jean- Franáois HÇnault, president of the AcadÇmie franáaise. At 51, she established what was to become Paris's most important literary salon—frequented by Diderot, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire- -where aristocrats and intellectuals came to trade influence and knowledge. Her correspondences with those who most engaged her passions—the Duchess of Maine, HÇnault, d'Alembert, her niece Julie de Lespinasse, Voltaire, and Horace Walpole—reveal her days to have been consumed with high-stakes social conquests and betrayals. Card games and coquetry aside, as a high priestess of the art of conversation, she exercised important influence on intellectual affairs. AcadÇmie franáaise elections became arenas for women to one-up their social competition with the seats won by their pet philosophes. Craveri (French Literature/Univ. of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy) fortifies every supposition, almost every page, with letters to, from, or about her subject. These letters, penned by masters like Walpole and Voltaire during the glory days of literary letter writing, not only substantiate Craveri's points but are minor literary works on their own. This impressive biography and history of French aristocratic intrigue rides more on the vitality of these quoted correspondences than on Craveri's solid, academic writing.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994

ISBN: 1-56792-001-2

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Godine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAST LIBERTINES
by Benedetta Craveri ; translated by Aaron Kerner

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.