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WILLIAM FAULKNER AND SOUTHERN HISTORY

Name: WILLIAM FAULKNER AND SOUTHERN HISTORY
Author: Joel Williamson
ISBN: 0-19-507404-1

by Joel Williamson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1993

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In a perceptive and sympathetic account based on extensive research in archives and public records, Williamson (Humanities/Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; The Crucible of Race, 1984, etc.) offers some revelations about Faulkner's ancestry and background, along with a comprehensive commentary on the novelist's life and works. Ashamed of his background, Faulkner, Williamson tells us, spent as much energy reinventing himself as he did creating his fiction. Rather than his descending, as he claimed, from Scottish Highlanders or an aristocratic slave-owning southern family, Faulkner's paternal grandfather, ``the Colonel,'' was an eccentric businessman, while his maternal grandfather was a sheriff who shot the editor of the local paper, embezzled public funds, and ran off with a mulatto girl. Faulkner's fictions about his own life were similarly less colorful than reality. He represented himself as, variously, an RAF pilot wounded in WW I, a bootlegger, a gentleman farmer, and, in his final invention, as a gentleman equestrian who rode the Virginia hunts. In fact, Faulkner never flew and his farm was a failure. He began writing while tending a boiler all night, married a divorcÇe, and ended up raising and supporting her children and family as well as his own. His real-life travels, seductions, and alcoholic bouts—especially with Howard Hawks, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart while adapting Hemingway's To Have and Have Not—are more interesting than his invented role as simple southern farmer, and than the other roles he assumed, such as literary ambassador (after his 1950 Nobel) and academic. Similarly, Williamson's Platonic schematization of Faulkner's work is less interesting than the intense experience and vitality of the fiction, which may or may not have had roots in Faulkner's life, culture, and beliefs. The biographical material here and the social history involving racial issues, sex, and class are especially significant- -but there's not much on the southern history of the title.

Pub Date: May 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-19-507404-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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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.