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THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1999

Name: THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1999
Author: Edward Hoagland
ISBN: 0-395-86054-7

edited by Edward Hoagland ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 1999

A feast of fine, important writing.

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Atwan’s annual series unfailingly delivers the highest quality writing, essays that display “literary [and] ruminative characteristics,” work that shows the “mind in process.”

This year’s editor, Edward Hoagland—a fine essayist in his own right—has collected essays by some of the best writers in the country: Joyce Carol Oates, Ian Frazier, Scott Russell Sanders, Mary Gordon, Dagoberto Gilb, David Quammen, and others. Hoagland echoes Atwan in noting that essays “simulate the mind’s own process.” He connects the current revival of the essay to that of the rage for personal memoir. (And he never once uses the phrase “creative nonfiction.”) Sanders’s marvelous piece tackles a traditional essay theme, as Hubble photographs and his daughter’s wedding spur musings on the origin of the cosmos and an examination of the concept of beauty. He is “certain that genuine beauty is not in my eye alone but out in the world.” In a startlingly revealing essay, “After Amnesia,” Joyce Carol Oates recalls a “humiliating experience” that occurred while she was touring a New Jersey detention center. Gordon’s personal essay relates the opening of a Bonnard exhibit at MOMA at the same time that her mother, in a nursing home, turns 90: “1 wonder if Bonnard could do anything with this lightless room.” John Lahr revisits his youth with his famous father, Bert, on the re-release of The Wizard of Oz and finds the ubiquitous commercialization of the Cowardly Lion “the enduring monument to Dad’s comic genius.” There’s also Joan Didion’s brilliant argument against the release of Hemingway’s unpublished work, Annie Dillard’s examination of religious belief, Gilb’s chance encounter with actress Victoria Principal, Toure’s boxing days at the Body and Soul Gym and Frazier’s delightful recollection of the “hundred pointless things we did in the woods” as 10-year-olds.

A feast of fine, important writing.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1999

ISBN: 0-395-86054-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
by Edward Hoagland

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DEVIL'S TUB
by Edward Hoagland

- BOOK REVIEW
CHILDREN ARE DIAMONDS
by Edward Hoagland

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NUTCRACKER

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

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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

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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

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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.