A generously sympathetic and artistically astute account of one poet by another, the author also of a biography of John Berryman (Dreamsong, 1990). Openly building on Ian Hamilton's 1982 biography of Lowell, Mariani has been able to draw on newly available sources: his own interviews and Lowell's correspondences with, among others, Elizabeth Bishop, George Santayana, Mary McCarthy, Adrienne Rich, and Randall Jarrell. The saga of Lowell and his friends, wives, and lovers (with their addictions, breakdowns, early deaths, and driving accidents) seems scripted for a sudsy TV movie, but Mariani conveys both ``the hugeness and the frailty'' of Lowell: An unwanted child and school bully, he became a precocious poet- historian; his initial literary allegiances to Eliot and Allen Tate later made room for a poetics of greater ``lived experience'' inspired by William Carlos Williams; from ambitious attempts at ``prophecy and myth'' he moved to an appreciation of ``the more humble fragments of the quotidian.'' Uncannily strong, Lowell was nicknamed ``Cal'' for Caliban and/or Caligula. The combination of strength and psychosis led to some problems, for Lowell's lyrical and rhetorical violence could turn physical, as it did the time he decided ``it would be good fun'' to steal tickets from a movie theater. ``The police were called, and once more, feeling cornered, Lowell took on the arresting police officer and beat him up.'' Lowell was descended from the great preacher Jonathan Edwards, and Mariani sees Lowell as very much in the lineage of a stern, passionate, torn Puritan idealism. Yet through expert (if interpretively familiar) analyses of major poems and quotations of Lowell's brilliant, often wry critical judgments, Mariani argues for the pertinence of Lowell's themes, eloquently defined here as ``our destructive self-interest, our racial fears and self- delusions, our murderous innocence.'' A welcome volume about a Rabelaisian monster of a man and a poet, made timelier by the recent publication of Elizabeth Bishop's letters. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-393-03661-8
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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