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AFTER HENRY

Name: AFTER HENRY
Author: Joan Didion
ISBN: 0679745394

by Joan Didion ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1992

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Didion's latest collection of previously published articles—her first since The White Album (1979)—reminds us that she's truly one of the premier essayists of our time. For all the disconnectedness she discerns throughout our public life, her prose, in its very complexity, beautifully plays against her subjects. In these pieces, mostly from The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, Didion artfully points out the "chasm" between "actual life and its preferred narratives." Organized by place (Washington, D.C.; L.A.; New York), these carefully structured essays help define the culture of our cities, which is otherwise distorted by self-reference and a complicit media. Writing about Reagan-era tell-all books, Didion recasts the Great Communicator as the Fisher King, the keeper of the right-revolutionary grail. On the 1988 campaign trail, she watches a moveable "set," a series of staged events that reveal "contempt for outsiders" (i.e., average citizens). In California, Didion documents the "protective detachment" that's become part of the frontier legacy. Patty Hearst's survival instinct makes her a typical West Coast girl, as pragmatic as those who live with earthquake jitters. Narrative conflict emerges in Didion's account of the 1988 Screen Guild writers' strike, during which the industry's hierarchy reasserted itself. Likewise, the L.A. mayoral race of 1989 exposed the class and race struggles that everyone in that city would rather ignore. The longest piece here concerns the Central Park Jogger, "a sacrificial player in the sentimental narrative that is New York public life." Like her essay on the "Cotton Club" murder, this stunning bit of mete-analysis proves Didion's contention that every crime—to be of larger interest—needs "a story, a lesson, a high concept." When the theoretical clashes with the empirical, she says, narrative takes over, distorting, transforming, ameliorating. For Didion, truth is in the details, arranged so precisely in her seemingly candid prose. A collection to savor by a stylist in top form.

Pub Date: May 1, 1992

ISBN: 0679745394

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN
by Joan Didion

- BOOK REVIEW
SOUTH AND WEST
by Joan Didion

- BOOK REVIEW
BLUE NIGHTS
by Joan Didion

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.