A noteworthy collection of essays and occasional prose pieces by the doyen of Native American letters. Momaday (The Ancient Child, 1989, etc.) here gathers some 30 pieces, ranging from a memoir of a stroll on a Greenland beach to a eulogy for the Mohawk actor known as Jay Silverheels. Most of these pieces are very short, a few only a page or two in length. As a result, some are only glancing, never quite getting into their subjects; this is especially evident in Momaday's essays on his travels to Germany and Russia, pieces that barely transcend the run of dentist's-office magazine fluff. Such lapses are few, though, and he is much better when he writes more at length on places of which he has a deep knowledge, especially the sacred geography of his native Kiowa landscape and the dry parts of New Mexico, where Billy the Kid once rode. Momaday has been nursing an interest in the Kid for years now, and several of these pieces turn to considering the unfortunate outlaw, a young man of mythicized history who is, Momaday concludes, ``finally unknowable.'' Momaday is no tree-hugger, but he presses the case for a mature ecological ethic that ``brings into account not only man's instinctive reaction to his environment but the full realization of his humanity as well.'' The best pieces in the book, such as a wonderful essay on Navajo place names, combine this ethic with a profound attention to local knowledge and old ways of knowing; echoing Borges, Momaday proclaims that for him paradise is a library, but also ``a prairie and a plain . . . [and] the place of words in a state of grace.'' No matter how incompletely developed, these anecdote-driven pieces are marked by Momaday's nearly religious attention to language and ``the music of memory.'' To read him is to be in the company of a master wordsmith.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15581-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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