Lucid, lyrical, educative and engaging virtually all areas of the brain.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, essayist and translator presents a motley, intriguing collection of nonfiction pieces from the past 30 years.
Simic (New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012, 2013, etc.) has assembled some 41 pieces (all but four appeared in previous collections) that show the vast range of his interests. Arranged chronologically, with a few exceptions, the essays—no real surprise to followers of the author—deal with art, philosophy, literature and poetry. In some cases—as in the many that previously appeared in the New York Review of Books—they deal with literary and artistic figures who may be less well-known to the general reading public—e.g., poet Yehuda Amichai, Joseph Cornell and Odilon Redon. But familiar names dance through these pages, as well. Simic continually sprinkles glitter on the work of Emily Dickinson (whom he greatly admires), and he offers a piece celebrating the work of Buster Keaton. He also writes affectingly about his own life, mentioning several times his boyhood experiences in World War II of being bombed by both the Nazis and the Allies. Perhaps as a result, he repeatedly excoriates the let’s-make-war mentality and wonders why the United States continues to employ it as an early option in international relations. A few pieces do not have the traditional look of an essay. “Night Sky” (1996), for example, is a series of brief prose poems, each of which gets its own page. An amusing piece about bird cages (from 2011) features a series of short paragraphs connected only by their allusions to a bird cage. Simic’s prose style is often epigrammatic. Virtually all the essays include sentences that could well find a home in Bartlett’s—e.g., “Each one of us is a synthesis of the real and unreal,” he wrote in 2000.
Lucid, lyrical, educative and engaging virtually all areas of the brain.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236471-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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