South African novelist Coetzee (Waiting for the Barbarians, 1982; Life & Times of Michael K, 1984) is a professor as well at the University of Cape Town—and this collection of seven essays about writings by whites in South Africa has a fashionable structuralist feel to it. To wit: though Coetzee is unable to honestly recommend (or even tempt the reader's interest) with the writers he deals with—C.M. van den Heever, Pauline Smith, Olive Schreiner, Alan Paton, Sarah Gertrude Millin—the forms and subjects and procedures they use are assumed to be (and are in fact) far more telling than any particular work. Coetzee will home in on the interpretations South African writers (mostly precontemporary) have given certain concepts—the sublime, the picturesque, idleness, the farm, blood—and find each time another wrinkle in the fabric of racist empowerment this culture has developed. Coetzee is such a good structuralist, in fact, that the quotations from the writers he's writing about seem almost beside the point, mere buttresses. What is inescapable, however, is a reader's conclusion that South African writing's golden age is not then but now—as it worries the bone of previous barbarisms of attitude, the cultural determinism, in the in-every-way pale tradition Coetzee details.
Pub Date: April 13, 1988
ISBN: 0300048629
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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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