bookshelf

PAINTED PARAGRAPHS

Name: PAINTED PARAGRAPHS
Author: Donald Newlove
ISBN: 0-8050-2978-8

INSPIRED DESCRIPTION FOR WRITERS AND READERS

by Donald Newlove ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 1993

bookshelf

In the second volume of an intended trilogy about writing, novelist/memoirist (and longtime Kirkus reviewer) Newlove (Curranne Trueheart, 1986, etc.) infuses readers with a sense of the power that real feeling, honestly observed, brings to great writing. Newlove sings and celebrates, and sometimes playfully deflates, gorgeous passages of description from Hemingway, Bunyan, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Chandler, Mailer, Whitman, and many others. By describing how a particular passage strikes him—sometimes in the back muscles, sometimes straight through the heart—Newlove shows that it's earthy feeling rather than any superhuman feat of intellect or froth of words that carves out the indelible ``spiritual landscape'' of a Tolstoy or Shakespeare. Riffing on one classic passage after another, bubbling over with an infectious love of language, Newlove demonstrates how vision and moral force in literature flow always from some true perception of the value of life: Truth must come from ``a man's grip on life.'' Hence we taste the brine that Hemingway tastes in the oysters he gobbles in Paris; we share a luscious, greedy snack of ham with Thomas Wolfe; we embrace the world of the body with Whitman; we drink in horror at the hands of Conrad. We even sample the fall and rise of Newlove himself as ``Drunkspeare,'' an alcoholic writer step-by-step restored to his exuberant senses. In some of his most useful passages, Newlove jokes about greats like ``Wild Bill'' Shakespeare so that we may see ``the simplicity, almost raggedness of his lines.'' Newlove freely abridges Hemingway, and prunes Conrad's jungle, but, strangely, he touches not a word in Mailer's Ancient Evenings—seeing ``brilliancies everywhere—and not a stuffed bird among them.'' Here, as in First Paragraphs (1992), the self-styled ``Dr. Don'' gives transfusions of the living spirit ``that breathes out of the writer's breast.''

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1993

ISBN: 0-8050-2978-8

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
INVENTED VOICES
by Donald Newlove

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRST PARAGRAPHS
by Donald Newlove

bookshelf

NUTCRACKER

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

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

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.