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WATERFRONT

Name: WATERFRONT
Author: Phillip Lopate
ISBN: 0-609-60505-4

A JOURNEY AROUND MANHATTAN

by Phillip Lopate ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2004

Is the evolving waterfront the key to New York City’s destiny? Lopate thinks so, and he could convince readers with his...

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A reflective walk along Manhattan’s shoreline—with attendant digressions historical, literary, architectural, practical, and subjective.

Though he writes like cream pouring from a jug, essayist Lopate’s (Getting Personal, p. 1210, etc.) thoughts act on the reader like a vigorous head massage: this will not be a “lighthearted book about wandering the watery perimeter of Manhattan,” but one written out of “a more reserved, critical perspective of a lifetime’s accumulated uncertainties.” Yet as this native New Yorker ponders the role of waterfront development, following the decline of its maritime and industrial functions, he is richly entertaining. Now that waterway use is not such an urgent need, Lopate argues, it’s important to consider a host of variables other than those associated purely with making a buck. So he considers the shoreline in all its glory: geologic, cultural, imagined. Lopate notes the role of schist, marble, and gneiss, animal skins and oysters, the tension between public space and private enclaves “as hidden from public view as the Imperial Palace in Peking,” the visual joy of the Starrett-Lehigh Building’s “flapjack stack of fenestration,” and the grudging, un-neighborly, suburban Chelsea Piers. Walking allows him to “sample other class realities: sipping the life above one’s station as well as below it,” to measure the good and bad of Robert Moses, and to take an honest appraisal of the risky terrain underpinning public housing projects. His sensible proposals about how to improve public use of the waterfront range from the specific suggestion that High Bridge be opened to pedestrians to the general declaration that the shoreline “must regain a sense of purpose, and not just become a theatrical backdrop.”

Is the evolving waterfront the key to New York City’s destiny? Lopate thinks so, and he could convince readers with his intimate and urbane tour. (35 b&w photos, 2 maps)

Pub Date: March 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-609-60505-4

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
A YEAR AND A DAY
by Phillip Lopate

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ESSAY
edited by Phillip Lopate

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE AMERICAN ESSAY
by Phillip Lopate

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.