On the crest of the ongoing memoir wave comes the inevitable anthologization of ``personal'' essays, in this grouping of eight diverse pieces edited and with an introduction by Nation theater critic Stone (Laughing in the Dark, p. 1095). Stone's excellent introduction, which addresses the memoir in our time and the culture of confession and recovery, reminds us why she is one of our most valued critics. Saying that she is suspicious of the genre and conscious of its pitfalls, she registers her respect for those writers who have ``mined self-knowledge and come clean with the goods,'' who ``retrieve themselves through language, lofting out of the murk of closeted secrets with the ordering instrument of candor.'' For her selections here she says she wanted material that was relatively unexplored in literature, and so here mixes ``daylit tales and fringescapes.'' Fringescapes, indeed. Phillip Lopate's quiet, extended reflection on his father, who lives in a nursing home, is a tame piece of storytelling as presented here alongside Jane Creighton's hothouse story of sibling incest, the 17-year-old writer named Terminator's graphic depictions of sexual abuse, Stone's own provocative descriptions of her experiences with bedroom dominance and submission, and Jerry Stahl's exhilarating picaresque of running wild and whacked with crackheads. Also included are father-portraits by Lois Gould and Catherine Texier, who describes her mother the French tart, and her meeting over lunch, as a grown woman, of the man previously present only at her conception. This book gathers much fine work, but is mainly for serious readers of autobiographical writing and admirers of writing ``on the edge.''
Pub Date: Oct. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-8021-1618-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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