For lovers of poetry and art, an excellent look at two men of incredible talent—and how they handled it.
An exploration of “two artists fumbling through the desultory streets of Paris, finding their paths to mastery.”
In 1902, living near the artist colony in Worpswede, Germany, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) and his wife, Clara Westhoff, had a new child when Rilke received a commission to write a monograph on Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Rilke left his family and traveled to Paris to meet the man for whose art he had a near-religious devotion. In Rodin, he expected to find a muse, a master, and a savior. He asked, “how should one live?” When Rodin replied, “work, always work,” Rilke took it as gospel, leading a mostly solitary life and devoting himself to his poetry. He sacrificed his family for his art; never mind that his wife was a talented sculptor. Rodin and Rilke established an immediate rapport, and the artist extended an open invitation to the poet. It was not an easy trek, but the monograph turned out to be a wonderful philosophy of creativity. Art Newspaper correspondent Corbett’s deep knowledge of her subjects accessibly reveals the strong connections—and various differences—between the two men. Rodin never questioned why he was an artist, unlike the metaphysical Rilke. Rodin’s influence on Rilke drove him to seek the maturity he was lacking for his craft. Rilke learned to empathize with inanimate objects and to appreciate abstractions, making his poetry sculpturally composed. Rilke also became Rodin’s secretary, living in the artist’s home until Rodin overreacted to what perhaps was only an overstep by Rilke in responding to a patron’s letter. Rodin fired him on the spot, and the two didn’t speak for months. That period was just what Rilke needed, as he realized that Rodin cast a diminishing shadow and that “art too is only a living.”
For lovers of poetry and art, an excellent look at two men of incredible talent—and how they handled it.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-24505-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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
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