A fine addition to an important body of work that looks more and more Nobel-worthy as the years pass.
Sharp insights abound in this gathering of 11 closely related essays on fictional technique and the attitudes underlying it, by the eminent Peruvian-born author of such contemporary classics as Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982) and The Feast of the Goat (2001).
This is ostensibly a series of letters to a fledgling novelist (about whom we learn precisely nothing), who’s doubtless a fictional device himself. Vargas Llosa amiably pours forth, nevertheless, the wisdom accumulated during a lifetime of writing, reading, and thinking about the impulse toward literary creation (“. . . a deep dissatisfaction with real life . . .”), the roots of fiction in each writer’s own life and opinions, and specific problems of creating and balancing form and content, as solved by such masters as Flaubert, Melville, Faulkner, and fellow Latin Americans Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Alejo Carpentier. The finest chapters are those in which Vargas Llosa addresses specific technical issues by analyzing relevant classic texts: e.g., the differences between chronological and psychological time as expressed in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Joyce’s Ulysses, and Mexican Augusto Monterroso’s hilarious single-sentence masterpiece, “The Dinosaur”; relationships between the real and the fantastic in James’s The Turn of the Screw and Woolf’s Orlando; and “Chinese box” construction” as perfected in The Thousand and One Nights and Don Quixote. If he actually exists, Vargas Llosa’s “young novelist” is fortunate indeed to profit from such lightly worn learning. If he doesn’t, the rest of us can be grateful for this relaxed tour through the provinces of the fiction-maker’s imagination. And the general reader will be happy to be pointed toward such comparatively little-known watershed works as João Guimarães Rosa’s The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, Juan Carlos Onetti’s A Brief Life, and the enchanting medieval epic Tirant lo Blanc.
A fine addition to an important body of work that looks more and more Nobel-worthy as the years pass.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-11916-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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