For Kerouac scholars, who will find news here and there. General readers will do better to stick to On the Road .
Affectionate if unrevealing portrait of the Beat Generation icon.
Edie Parker came up in the tony suburb of Grosse Pointe, Mich., comfortable but “surrounded by the ‘me’ society” and ready for life in the big city. Making for New York as soon as she could leave her parents’ home, she met Jack Kerouac, then on a Columbia University football scholarship, and married him just as soon as she could post bail for him, Kerouac having been jailed as an accessory to murder in the Lucien Carr affair, about which Kerouac-Parker has little to add to the bulging literature on the subject. Indeed, sad to say, this book adds little to the store of Kerouacana, apart from a few gossipy tidbits: All of Jack’s friends were crazy on dope; Allen Ginsberg “could have been a great politician” but “chose to be friends with Kerouac, [William] Burroughs, and Lucien instead of women”; for a guy who would go on to write On the Road, Kerouac “never could learn to drive”; and so on. This slight, posthumously published memoir is, for all that, heartfelt, full of the naïve wonderment befitting an 18-year-old bride: “Being just married, with my love almost out of jail and the beer and the food, I was in heaven! Everyone was singing and we joined in. When our steaks came it was pure joy to cut into them and we never spoke until we were done.” Affectingly, Kerouac-Parker writes that she left Kerouac in 1946 because of the drugs and booze but would not do so again could she change the course of history; for his part, she adds, “Jack persisted in calling me his ‘life’s wife.’ ”
For Kerouac scholars, who will find news here and there. General readers will do better to stick to On the Road .Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-87286-464-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
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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