Some interesting material on hitherto unexplored aspects of Chekhov’s life, but this one’s strictly for specialists.
A peculiar biography that justifies its addition to an overcrowded shelf by focusing on the landscapes most important to the Russian writer.
It’s a good idea—for a magazine article or an academic monograph. Drawn out to book length, this geographical survey eventually palls as the text wanders from Taganrog, where Chekhov was born in 1860, through Moscow and St. Petersburg to Melikhovo, his country home outside Moscow, and Yalta, the Crimean resort to which he relocated in a vain attempt to stem the progress of his tuberculosis. British scholar Bartlett (Russian/Univ. of Durham; Wagner and Russia, not reviewed) admits to taking “an impressionistic approach,” and early chapters provide atmospheric context for his work by the evoking flat, unpopulated steppe, dotted with ancient Scythian burial mounds, of his childhood; and the arcadian meadows, forests and rivers he enjoyed when summering in a dacha outside Moscow. But her occasional schematic linking of these vistas to a particular story through lengthy quotes merely serves to underscore how little information this book provides about Chekhov’s literary life, apart from his surprising friendship with reactionary St. Petersburg magazine publisher Alexei Suvorin. The plays in particular get very short shrift here; in a typical passage, the author writes, “When [Chekhov] returned to Nice for that last visit, he spent the first week of his stay putting the final touches on Three Sisters”—which has hardly been mentioned before. Happily, we learn a good deal more about Chekhov the man than Chekhov the writer. He quietly improved every place he lived, treating the local peasants long after he had given up practicing medicine and raising funds for local schools and post offices. The chronology of his existence, largely abandoned for long stretches, reasserts itself in the final chapters about his slow decline and death at a German spa in 1904, which make the previous emphasis on the physical terrain seem even more arbitrary.
Some interesting material on hitherto unexplored aspects of Chekhov’s life, but this one’s strictly for specialists.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-3075-2
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Free Press UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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