A no-nonsense midlife rites-of-passage chronicle by an acclaimed poet who finds love and long-lost kin as she seeks to understand her own past. Jiles, an American who went to Canada with her draft-avoiding lover in the 60's and stayed on to teach in the Arctic and write poetry, returns to Missouri in the late 1980's to bury her mother. There, at a horse-trading jamboree in the Ozark hills, she meets Jim Johnson, a Texan and retired colonel, a man ``full of experiences I've never had as well as information and data and books on military history I've never read.'' Attracted to each other, the two are nevertheless wary of commitment: Johnson, unhappy in a second marriage, still mourns his beloved first wife; Jiles, who has lived the life of a freedom-loving literary bohemian, is reluctant to settle down. They have serious political differences as well—Jim fought in Vietnam, Jiles was against the war. Curious about her Missouri cousins and the role of her father and grandfather in their lives, Jiles uses her questions about her family as a way for the two to get better acquainted. With an advance from her publisher, she and Johnson travel in a trailer around the South, catching up with family and history and finding true love as well. And love, Jiles learns, turns out to be just as good for older and perhaps wiser lovers. The family stories, however revealing of clan legends and loyalties, are secondary to the evolving love story, told with disarming candor and good humor. A heartwarming but refreshingly unsentimental account.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-58014-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
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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