A helpful and intermittently revealing (if scarcely essential) gloss on both Eco’s unusual fiction and his knotty...
“Occasional pieces,” all dating from the 1990s, that include essays, speeches, and revised correspondence from the erudite novelist-philosopher-semiotician Eco (Kant and the Platypus, 1999, etc.).
Eco speculates (in “When the Other Appears on the Scene” and “Migration, Tolerance, and the Intolerable”) that the bases of moral actions that not specifically grounded in religious belief arise from an acknowledgement of “the importance of the other.” The former piece is quite closely reasoned, but the latter (which meanders between assessing the influence of “migrant” populations on settled societies and condemning the “Eurocentric” nature of what might be called millennial chic) is rather less focused. Elsewhere, Eco considers the relationship of the “intellectual community” to the (arguably now obsolete) phenomenon of military conflict, concluding (in “Reflections on War”) that “It is an intellectual duty to proclaim the inconceivability of war.” In “On the Press,” he analyzes the impact of instantaneous communication and “the dynamic of provocation” (especially as perfected by television interviewers). And in “Ur-Fascism,” which offers a series of keen discriminations between Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s Nazism, he makes a convincing case for using the former word generically, as “a synechdoche . . . for different totalitarian movements”—while simultaneously sketching in an illuminating piecemeal memoir of growing up in Italy during WWII. Most persuasive when (as here) most personal, Eco attempts in these brief arguments to create a convincing impression of a conscientious intellectual earnestly addressing contemporary social and moral crises as a means of understanding “what we ought to do, what we ought not to do, and what we must not do at any cost.”
A helpful and intermittently revealing (if scarcely essential) gloss on both Eco’s unusual fiction and his knotty philosophical and semantic studies.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100446-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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