Whatever the reality, it adds up to another good yarn from Frayn.
An entertaining, if inconclusive, game of historical cat-and-mouse.
Playwright and novelist Frayn (Head-Long, 1999, etc.) was in the midst of staging a new play, Copenhagen, when a curious package arrived in the mail. His play concerned a fateful but mysterious 1941 meeting between German scientist Werner Heisenberg (a key figure in the Nazi atomic-weapons program) and Danish physicist Neils Bohr; the package contained papers evidently found beneath the floorboards of an English country house where Heisenberg and other Nazi scientists had been interned at the end of WWII. As Frayn and director Burke puzzled through the papers, written in semiliterate German and even less literate Russian (or could it be Bulgarian?) and full of cryptic references to uranium, table tennis, and champagne, they concluded they’d either stumbled on a trove of hitherto unknown secret documents written in especially vexing code or had fallen victim to an especially crafty hoax masquerading as “a parody of a pedantic scientific paper.” They incline toward the latter view for much of the narrative, although they’re drawn toward the former by the arrival of a letter (apparently from the British government) demanding the surrender of the trove. By the end of the account (which the authors complicate by adding thoughtful red-herring notes on the art of theatrical deception and the psyche-bending qualities of the stage), the reader isn’t quite sure what to make of the whole affair: if true, it offers a minor footnote in WWII history, and, if false, makes for at least a pleasant exercise for mystery buffs.
Whatever the reality, it adds up to another good yarn from Frayn.Pub Date: May 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6752-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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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