Sympathetic, perfectly tuned biography of France's most word- wild, controversial novelist ever, whose sins put Zola and Genet in the shade; by French CÇline-scholar Vitoux, and superbly translated by Browner. According to Vitoux, only three of CÇline's novels are now available in English: Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan, and Guignol's Band. CÇline (1894-1961) was a towering stylist who invented his own gutter argot. He wrote...fulminated!...blew his guts into your face!...with three little dots...smashing all grammar!...no subjects! stinking predicates!...a rich black delirium of Shakespearean belches!- -though in Journey, his first foulmouthed masterpiece, he'd not yet invented the three dots. Born to the petite bourgeoisie as Louis- Ferdinand Destouches, he suffered poor health most of his life, wrote scathingly of the stifling, gaslit Paris passageway in which he spent his youth, created a monster of his father (really a rather nice guy), was wounded in WW I, reeled from headaches and hallucinations and ever after complained of a train passing by in his left ear. CÇline, a doctor, traveled (or fled) greatly, always visiting health clinics wherever he went, especially in the US: A visit to the Ford auto plant in Dearborn produced a chapter of bilious satire in Journey. When that novel was published, Vitoux tells us, France swooned with joy and horror, and Death on the Installment Plan brought such geysers of outrage that CÇline became a paranoid victim of persecution mania and wrote two filthy anti- Semitic tracts, for which he was vilified for the rest of his life and which helped land him in prison for a year in postwar Denmark. He died having finished a horrific trilogy about WW II; its central novel, North, is now a classic. Vitoux makes few excuses for CÇline but does show that his anti-Semitism was both a mania and a literary artifice. Strong stuff.
Pub Date: April 29, 1992
ISBN: 1-55778-255-5
Page Count: 640
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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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