Sheffield is the right writer for this book, but its hasty production is evident on nearly every page.
A critic’s earnest elegy for the late rock star’s influence on music, fashion, sexuality, and personal transformation.
When David Bowie died on Jan. 10, 2016, Rolling Stone writer Sheffield (Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke, 2013, etc.) was well-equipped to put his career in context. A cassette of Bowie songs was in his boom box when he got the news, and unlike many critics who gave up on Bowie during the creatively depleted 1990s, the author not only kept up, but believed the singer was in the midst of a career revival. That enthusiasm sloshes and froths in this mash note, which was crashed to publication in a month. Sheffield is prone to cringeworthy overstatement (Bowie delivered his final opus, “Blackstar,” because “he knew his death would make the world lonely”), head-scratching digressions (“C-3PO’s Bowie-est moment is Return of the Jedi”), and an overused and overly cute habit of ending paragraphs with snippets of Bowie lyrics. This is all unfortunate, because when Sheffield tones down his jazz-hands–y prose, he’s a cleareyed thinker about Bowie’s place in the pop firmament. Blending personal recollections with a mad dash through his discography, Sheffield persuasively tracks the influence of one TV performance of “Starman,” explores how Bowie’s omnivorous appetite for drugs shaped his persona and music, and—Sheffield’s particular emphasis—muses on how Bowie’s rejection of sexual, musical, and sartorial fetters made him a one-man safe space for at least two generations of outcasts. “Bowie was all about eroticizing what you don’t know for sure,” writes the author, a sentiment that seems exactly right. Sheffield wants to demystify his hero, but only so much; after all, his Sphinx-like presence was part of his charm. But a better book would explore his often perplexing metamorphoses, not just clumsily honor his “Ovid-like sense of constant mutation.”
Sheffield is the right writer for this book, but its hasty production is evident on nearly every page.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-256270-8
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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