There are 20 pages of chapter notes, but this biography is too good to be confused with literary criticism. Powers calls out...
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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