These stylistic tics, along with strained comparisons with the subjects of Callow’s other biographies, suggest that the...
Another literary biography from an English novelist who has taken on Chekhov, Lawrence, and Whitman in the past.
Callow (Chekhov, 1998, etc.) tracks the Scotsman’s peregrinations through Britain, Europe, the US, and the South Seas, and he is concerned with the character of the man rather than sources or significance of his work. Stevenson’s stiff but devoted father Thomas gets a good deal of attention, as does his strong-willed, erratic American wife Fanny Osbourne Stevenson, who alienated most (though not all) of the writer’s literary pals in London. This is clearly a labor of love, and the reader cannot help but share the biographer’s fascination with the vagaries of this peripatetic, sickly rebel, his unexpected toughness, and his uncanny charm; but, as Callow points out in his preface, there has been no dearth of Stevenson biographies, and the point of this particular contribution is, to put it charitably, difficult to fathom. He claims to be debunking the myth that surrounds his subject—without clearly stating just what that myth consists of—yet most of his commentary is in fact directed at defending RLS from his detractors and caviling at his critics (notably Bruce Chatwin, whose motivations regarding Stevenson are dissected more effectively than any of Stevenson’s own decisions). Even more confusing than his approach to his subject is his attitude toward his readers. Callow avers that his study is meant for “the intelligent reader with no specialized knowledge,” yet he alludes to events in Stevenson’s life and often quite obscure people in his circle as though they were already familiar. Knowledgeable RLS students will find no new information and very little in the way of a coherent, original perspective on the man; newcomers to Stevenson will get no introduction either to his work or to the world of Victorian letters and manners from which he was in constant flight. The tone veers irritatingly between scholarly journalism, popular biography, and belle-lettristic musing; his sentences and paragraphs on the other hand are consistently packed with redundancies and non sequiturs.
These stylistic tics, along with strained comparisons with the subjects of Callow’s other biographies, suggest that the author is addressing no audience other than himself.Pub Date: April 6, 2001
ISBN: 1-56663-343-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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