Composing in a minor key, one of our great literary and cultural critics reflects on his life and the themes that have aroused his passion. Steiner has published 12 or so remarkable books of criticism, depending on how you count them, and sundry other volumes of fiction and essays. As a senior book reviewer at the New Yorker, he did much to call attention to books that might otherwise have slipped by unnoticed. Lately, he has taken a chair in comparative literature at Oxford, the first ever. Not a bad track record, by any standard. Alas, Mr. Steiner is not satisfied, for no Steinerian school of thought has sprung from his brow. Despite undertones of self-pity and outlandish self-regard, Steiner once again offers a beautifully written and intensely stimulating book. This one is a retrospective of the main influences on and themes of his career: the relationship of high culture to cruelty in the 20th century; the superior authenticity of diaspora Judaism vis-Ö-vis Israel; the undefinable link between language and music; the sheer miracle of language itself; the modern retreat from the word; and the meaning of God for the modern mind. Steiner explores these themes anew from a biographical point of view, explaining how he came to them and what they have meant to him. Oddly, Steiner's tone is elegiac, for he thinks his work has been underrated and occasionally plagiarized. At the same time, he is proud to be an outsider to recent decades of literary criticism. Justifiably sohe really is an extraterritorial critic, belonging to the tradition of exceptional figures such as Walter Benjamin and Karl Kraus. This new book amply rewards both casual readers and specialists. Steiner's work is a tribute to a single-minded originality that has been successful against the odds. He is inimitable; a Steiner school of criticism is a contradiction in terms.
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-300-07503-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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