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OAKLAND, JACK LONDON, AND ME

Name: OAKLAND, JACK LONDON, AND ME
Author: Eric Miles Williamson
ISBN: 978-1-933896-11-3

by Eric Miles Williamson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 2007

As if Norman Mailer had devoured Derrida and spit out the bones.

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Bare-chested, sometimes self-conscious lit-crit from novelist/professor Williamson (East Bay Grease, 1999, etc.).

Williamson’s ostensible subject is Jack London, who grew up down the street in Oakland a century before him. London does not figure in the canon, that body of received, approved literature of which Williamson is a champion: “When I get rolling in defense of the canon, my heart rate increases, my speech quickens, and I need only a pulpit to make the picture complete.” Not that the canon is complete. Williamson remarks that Poe was admitted to it not so long ago (perhaps, he does not say, because the French adore him), while Steinbeck and many others remain outside it. (Toni Morrison, on the other hand, is in it—Williamson finds her the lesser writer, but there it is.) London is problematic: He is, or at least was, popular, and “good stories that can be enjoyed by the hoi polloi . . . are not art”; and he espoused extreme political views that progressed from socialistic to fascistic with not much in between—all in keeping, Williamson proposes, with the luck of a poor kid who manages to get out of his crummy surroundings and then realizes just what lowlifes he had been forced to live among. Williamson, himself brought up in the East Bay’s rougher territory, stakes an us-against-the-world argument there: It’s a poor thing, and only someone brought up poor can understand why a person might call for the disenfranchisement of the unwashed masses. Mussolinian echoes aside, Williamson does venture that as the canon is changing and growing, it may find room for London and the other dead-end kids of the pen: “The poor are slowly infiltrating the ranks of academia, and in revolutionary fashion, they’re torching the fortress.” Fans of White Fang and The Iron Heel will rejoice. The deconstructionists, on the other hand . . .

As if Norman Mailer had devoured Derrida and spit out the bones.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-933896-11-3

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Texas A&M Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SAY IT HOT
by Eric Miles Williamson

- BOOK REVIEW
EAST BAY GREASE
by Eric Miles Williamson

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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.