A somewhat sanitized portrait; Duncan might have preferred something bolder.
Cartoonist Jones takes an admiring glance at the truncated life and roller-coaster times of the woman who traversed three continents to revolutionize dance.
Denounced as everything from a “wild voluptuary” to a “jumping Jezebel,” Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) famously remarked, “People do not live nowadays. They get about 10 percent out of life.” Every page of this admiring graphic biography reminds readers that the American dance pioneer herself always got 100 percent. The thin volume depicts a number of turbulent scenes from Duncan’s personal and professional experiences, underscoring the frenetic exuberance with which she conducted her many affairs. With bold strokes and supple lettering, Jones’s pen-and-ink drawings attempt to animate Duncan’s boundary-smashing style, onstage and off: as the barefoot, tunic-clad artist whose free-flowing movements transformed classical dance, and as the convention-defying single mother of two and very public lover of famous figures and political causes. “With this book, I’m asking a generation in flip-flops to imagine how traffic stopped when Isadora strolled down 5th Avenue in her homemade sandals,” writes Jones. It’s difficult to extract the truth about Duncan’s life, the author acknowledges, from the diverse, often contradictory accounts supplied in the dancer’s writings, reminiscences by her contemporaries and biographies with various agendas. Jones’s portrait depicts a gifted artist driven by a passion to realize at whatever cost her feminist vision of the dancer of the future: “woman in her purest expression, body and soul in harmony, emerging from centuries of civilized forgetfulness, no longer at war with spirituality—the highest intelligence in the freest body.” Interestingly, although Jones espouses Duncan’s unabashed belief that “to expose is art, to conceal is vulgar,” and doesn’t shy away from depicting the great tragedies of her subject’s life, she tends to suggest rather than explicitly spell out the dancer’s more controversial actions: dalliances with women, numerous suicide attempts, proclivity for public drunkenness.
A somewhat sanitized portrait; Duncan might have preferred something bolder.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8090-9497-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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