Shows that bright shards of clear prose can serve as windows into the unknown.
A collection of essays, book, music and art reviews, ruminations and recollections by the celebrated Franco-Czech novelist (Ignorance, 2002, etc.).
Kundera's mind is an expansive forest, and he visits many trees in these pieces, some more than a dozen years old. In some cases he writes about painters, musicians and novelists whose names and works are widely known (Céline, Philip Roth, Beethoven, Breton). Elsewhere, he expatiates about the creations of artists whose identities are known principally by the cognoscenti, companions and countrymen. The latter include the music of Iannis Xenakis, the paintings of Ernest Breleur and the writings of Danilo Kis. Regardless of the subject, Kundera's prose glows, sometimes in sufficient strength to illuminate even the most obscure of his subjects. The pieces all share a compression of style—his few words say much—and even some experimentation. In an essay on painter Francis Bacon, for example, he alternates 1995 observations with what he had written initially in 1977. (He employs a similar strategy later in a piece about Xenakis' music.) Kundera writes with passion about what he views as the foolishness of surrendering a friendship to political differences, and he snarls about the deleterious influence of film and television in a piece about the 100th anniversary of the motion picture, which he labels “the principal agent of stupidity” in the world. The author marvels about the Allied occupation forces after World War II, especially the Americans, who seemed so sublimely confident in their divine election and sanction. Continually, he revisits the hopeful Prague spring of 1968 and its hideous aftermath and agrees with Czech writer Vera Linhartova, who wrote how exile can be transformative for an artist. He chides biographers who are enraptured with the sex lives, and even body odors, of their subjects, and he wonders about the artistic portrayal of the ugly.
Shows that bright shards of clear prose can serve as windows into the unknown.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-189441-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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