Well-turned ambiguities, delivered with the steady patter of a late-night TV host’s extended comic monologue.
The author of Car Camping (not reviewed) on his schizophrenic visit to the world of bullfighting.
It’s Sundeen who spent the morning “emptying tubs of human poo” in a Utah national park before his agent calls to ask if he can tackle a book on bullfighting in Mexico. Mark may have his doubts about his qualifications for this gig, but his alter ego, Travis LaFrance—the name under which Sundeen published “a slim paperback about hunting for desert rodents with highly trained falcons”—has none. Travis “would never look back at his travels and wonder who gives a shit about what some middle-class American has to say about the world,” notes his creator/doppelgänger. Mark may balk as a torero “rams the little knife straight into the bull’s brain, probing in tight circles like he’s scraping the meat from a coconut,” but when Travis writes it all down, he finds bravery draped with finesse: “How brave the man. How noble the beast, how profound the ritual!” Women shimmer like moths about Travis’s flame; those who encounter Mark are less inclined to swoon: “My car’s full,” said the girl. “You can meet us there if you want.” Never does Mark measure up to Travis, and so determinedly does he deploy humor as his foil that we can virtually see the chords of his neck muscles as he strains to eternalize the pitch of low irony. True to form, Mark loses the girl in the end, though not before entertaining forays into cockfights, flamenco dancing, and reminiscences about his earlier attempt to join the Prague Renaissance. (He boarded the wrong train and wound up in Budapest.) Along the way, Sundeen also gets in some good jabs at journalists who become instant experts. “How do you know so much about bullfighting anyway?” asks an acquaintance. “I’ve read quite a few books,” Mark replies.
Well-turned ambiguities, delivered with the steady patter of a late-night TV host’s extended comic monologue.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-3616-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
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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