Taken together, these pieces attest to a true life, a life well-lived and well-written.
Previously published but not collected until now, these magazine pieces reflect the author’s wide range of experience and interests as well as his prose mastery.
Salter (1925-2015) was best known for his fiction (All That Is, 2013, etc.), but these essays not only reflect a prolific career in literary journalism, but also show how much magazines have changed in the last half-century or so. There’s an insightful interview with Nabokov, one that extends well beyond Lolita and which had to be written from memory because the subject, already reluctant, wouldn’t allow notes. It ends on this autumnal note: “The light is fading, there is no one else in the room or the room beyond. The hotel has many mirrors, some of them on doors, so it is like a house of illusion, part vision, part reflection, and rich with dreams.” What a surprise to learn that this was a 1975 assignment for People, which no longer would be expected to publish such a writer on such an author. These aren’t selections from literary journals but rather from travel and food magazines and other general-interest publications. A West Point graduate and Korean War fighter pilot, Salter chronicles the changes in that institution and his near-death experiences. He also writes of his decision to leave the military and devote himself full time to his writing, hoping that he could somehow support his wife and family. “It was the most difficult act of my life,” he writes. But it paid off, not only in literary acclaim, but in sidelights such as writing for the screen and the theater (the subject of “Passionate Falsehoods,” a deliciously acerbic 1997 New Yorker piece about observing from the periphery of the film world) and making documentaries. “There is something called the true life,” writes Salter, “which I cannot describe and which perhaps varies as one sees it from different angles and at different times.”
Taken together, these pieces attest to a true life, a life well-lived and well-written.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61902-936-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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
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