"Before tourism there was travel, and before travel there was exploration." Fussell, who sounds in his wittier moments like S. J. Perelman turned professor, is too much the tenderfoot and ben vivant for exploration, and he heartily loathes tourism. But, ah, travel! In Fussell's idealistic, embittered view, travel is a supremely humanistic activity, and never more so than when the traveler is a gifted writer, conscious of the past and capable of translating the myths of heroic adventure and pastoral romance into terms of wagon-lits and steamships (not jet planes). Fussell identifies the Twenties and Thirties as the last great age of literary travel, and in this knowledgeable, elegant study he celebrates it and laments its passing. Taking up where The Great War and Modern Memory left off, Fussell chronicles the explosion of travel from Britain after the depressing confinement of WW I: D. H. Lawrence to Italy, Graham Greene to Africa, Peter Fleming to China and Brazil, Auden and Isherwood to America and elsewhere, Robert Byron to "Oxiana," Evelyn Waugh to Abyssinia, etc., etc. Fussell doesn't limit himself to spirited appreciations of their work. He also neatly illuminates the genre, connecting it to his authors' native eccentricity, individualism, and distrust of authority (he memorably defines the traveler as "a hypertropied freak of British empiricism"). Best of all perhaps, he puts his criticism in a colorful personal frame, by relating his own doomed comic-romantic attempts at travel in a world ruled by tourism. In this irascibly lyrical vein Fussell is as good as the people he writes about—which is very good indeed.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1980
ISBN: 0195030680
Page Count: 229
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980
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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