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DANGEROUS WATER

Name: DANGEROUS WATER
Author: Ron Powers
ISBN: 0-465-07670-X

A BIOGRAPHY OF THE BOY WHO BECAME MARK TWAIN

by Ron Powers ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1999

There are 20 pages of chapter notes, but this biography is too good to be confused with literary criticism. Powers calls out...

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An eloquent portrait of the American Renaissance’s greatest writer as a young man. Powers is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of eight books.

His expertise in popular culture, mass media, history, and the American small town is in evidence here as in Far from Home: Life and Loss in Two American Towns (1991). Powers, who also grew up in Hannibal, Mo., sees Mark Twain as America’s first popular, media-fed superstar who knew how to dress for the photo op. Powers exposes Clemens’s mirth for the flip side of the man’s many tragedies. “Sammy” was a premature baby and sickly toddler who grew up into the barefoot boy who showed off for the girl we'd know as Becky Thatcher. Far from a protected and fanciful Tom Sawyer, Clemens, as a three-year-old sleepwalker, tugged at his sister’s blanket a few days before she died. She was one of several siblings Sam would lose. Unsuccessful but not evil like Huck Finn’s papy, Samuel’s father was relatively bland, passing on only his tendency toward bad debts and investments. Powers shows that young Sam was fascinated by the spoken word (whether of preachers or slaves) and by books, from the Bible (despite his famous heresy) to Cooper, because his reality was so painful. The biographer notes an inner conflict that is the key to Clemens’s appeal: “the Connecticut literary gent contending with the western roughneck.” After adolescence, itching to light out for the territories, young Clemens “made the break from his landlocked life” and talked himself to the captain’s wheel on riverboats. Powers feels the Mark Twain pseudonym helped free Clemens to become the age’s most celebrated humorist, traveler, lecturer and novelist.

There are 20 pages of chapter notes, but this biography is too good to be confused with literary criticism. Powers calls out “mark twain” and leads us on Samuel Clemens’s dangerous, poignant, and delightful voyage against the current.

Pub Date: June 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-465-07670-X

Page Count: 250

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NO ONE CARES ABOUT CRAZY PEOPLE
by Ron Powers

- BOOK REVIEW
LAST FLAG DOWN
by John Baldwin and Ron Powers

- BOOK REVIEW
TOM AND HUCK DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
by Ron Powers

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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.