An impressively edited, sharply revealing life in letters.
An intimate view of the prolific British novelist and philosopher.
For hours each day, Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) (Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, 1998, etc.) sat at her roll-top desk writing letters—by hand, often with a Montblanc fountain pen—to friends, lovers, editors, students, and even strangers who asked about her work. From 5,000 letters, Horner (Emerita, English Literature/Kingston Univ.) and Rowe (English/Kingston Univ.), co-editors of Iris Murdoch: Texts and Contexts (2012), have judiciously selected more than 760 that represent Murdoch’s passions and interests, her reflections on her career, and her views on politics, philosophy, religion, and culture. With their deep knowledge of Murdoch’s life and work, the editors have produced an authoritative, readable, and informative volume that contextualizes the writer’s vibrant, intense, and sometimes slyly witty correspondence. Murdoch’s love affairs form one important theme. “I find myself astonishingly interested in the opposite sex, and capable of being in love with about six men all at once,” she wrote to a friend at the age of 20. Four years later she confessed to another that she had, at last, lost her virginity. She was sleeping with two men at the time, neither of whom she loved. Murdoch’s consuming passion was her ambition to write “a long long and exceedingly obscure novel objectifying the queer conflicts I find within myself and observe in the characters of others.” Her love life—with men and women—was complicated, as she struggled to juggle her lovers’ demands with what the astute editors call her “deep and confusing sexual tensions.” Murdoch’s literary reputation was complicated, as well: “her idiosyncratic brand of mystical realism” and moral philosophy garnered early praise but later fell out of fashion when “doubts about her philosophy fed doubts about her novels.” She often felt overcome, she writes, by “a ghastly conviction of second-ratedness.”
An impressively edited, sharply revealing life in letters.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-691-17056-5
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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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