Blackwood comes across as a breath of fresh—if bizarre and spooky—air, an unfettered character that Ashley captures well but...
British Mammoth anthologist Ashley (The Mammoth Book of Fantasy, p. 1252, etc.) resurrects the wildly creative Algernon Blackwood, a master of dread and the spine-shudder.
Now forgotten, Blackwood (1869–1952) was roundly hailed in his day as a genius of horror and supernatural fiction. Ashley brings him back to prominence by giving close and intelligent readings of his work, focusing on such classic stories as “The Wendigo,” “The Willows,” and “The Man Whom the Trees Loved.” Much of that work was produced on the fly while Blackwood, an incessant traveler, was traipsing around Europe, America, and Canada. Ashley follows in his footsteps, exploring the gradual unfurling of Blackwood's communion with nature, his exploration of haunted houses, his fascination with esoteric beliefs. Blackwood’s associates at any given time, Ashley suggests, had a fascinating impact on what he was writing. His sense of the wider world can be gleaned from his dealings with various theosophical societies and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a group intrigued by Western hermeticism, Hebrew magic, and the Kabbala, introduced to him by W.B. Yeats. Ashley also conveys Blackwood’s perception of how his stories acted on the imagination with well-chosen quotes: “My idea,” the author declared in 1915, “has been to describe the sense of Wonder which, beginning with Fancy, leads on to bigger wonder which is Spiritual; and, incidentally, to show the wonder of common things.” Though his work was never a great success in the theater, radio and television were natural venues for Blackwood, whose bass voice worked wonders with the often macabre and always otherworldly nature of his stories.
Blackwood comes across as a breath of fresh—if bizarre and spooky—air, an unfettered character that Ashley captures well but thankfully doesn't tether.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0928-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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