John Updike has made a stalwart attempt to rescue James Buchanan from historical oblivion — and failed. His play about the last hours of the fifteenth President of the United States offers, alas, a hero who is not so much dying as dramatically dormant. Propped up on bolsters, lying in a sleigh bed at his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, fat and old and white, surrounded by the threatening figures and events from a troubled past, quarreling with God, debating with himself, Updike's Buchanan is a sort of recalcitrant Job engulfed by his tormentors. The Civil War three years ended, Buchanan, the predecessor of Lincoln, is conscience-stricken over the duplicity of the North, the bulling of the South ("Once the North could call itself righteous, then human greed could have its space, and the rest was but a long and bloody grinding down"). Flitting in and out of his guilty reveries are the ghosts of Jackson, Lincoln, and the Czarina of Russia, of his mother and his father, of the woman he jilted and the niece he adored. Always a fluent writer, Updike has, naturally, many moments of decorous felicity, but the play seems, nevertheless, to have largely been composed between bouts with the scholars (the political pedantry, the affectedly venerable language) and fretful musings among the works of La Rochefoucauld and Pascal. Buchanan's wan note of misanthropy is emphasized through his highly unusual penchant for French mots (imagine that happening in the Washington of today!), one of which — "Il est plus aise de connaitre l'homme en general, que de connaitre un homme en particulier" — might serve as a fitting clue to the fundamental absence of emotional interest, since the most revealing, intimate touch about Buchanan's character in Updike's dry, cold, statuesque play comes in an early stage direction: "This is the so-called Back Bedroom, preferred by the dying man perhaps because, being over the kitchen, it was warm.
Pub Date: April 1, 1974
ISBN: 0811702383
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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