Though Bram teaches at NYU, there’s no hint of academic stuffiness in a book that offers the joy of reading as well as...
An amiable stroll through selected works of history and historical fiction, showing how the lines between them blur and how each can inform the other.
The author of nine novels and two works of nonfiction, Bram (Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America, 2012, etc.) plainly delights in reading about the past and is only discriminate about quality, not genre, as he feeds his “history addiction.” He immerses himself in the historical past for all the usual reasons and not necessarily the most high-minded: “I believe history’s original appeal is as pure escape,” he writes. “The past offers a fact-based fantasy, a dream with footnotes….As the flight attendants instruct us before takeoff, ‘The nearest exit may be behind you.’ ” Though Bram acknowledges how we can benefit from history, learn from it, and deepen our perspective, it’s refreshing that he underscores the pure pleasure of reading and that he takes such delight in it. He believes that “much can be gained by treating fiction and nonfiction as different sides of the same mountain” and that “while fiction strives for the condition of history, many history books hope to achieve the high drama of novels.” The author shows how some of the most successful and popular works of history employ narrative momentum and character development that could be termed novelistic, while historical novels (War and Peace is “the gold standard of historical fiction”) depend on researched detail and plausibility. The author’s argument isn’t as provocative as some of his counterintuitive judgments on highly praised works and authors, including Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (“a Game of Thrones for highbrows”) and Cormac McCarthy: “After you scrape off the fancy prose style, his novel Blood Meridian could be just the fantasy of a really mean fourteen-year-old boy who’s seen too many Sergio Leone movies.”
Though Bram teaches at NYU, there’s no hint of academic stuffiness in a book that offers the joy of reading as well as praising it.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55597-743-6
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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
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.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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