History and private life interfused utterly by a master writer in a way at once authentic, unpretentious, moving, and of...
Now that he alone of his immediate family is still alive, this remarkable German writer (The Invention of Curried Sausage, 1995, etc.) produces a group memoir that, with piercing intelligence, reawakens—and grieves over—a dreadful history.
Born in 1940 the youngest of three siblings, Timm calls himself “the afterthought” of the family, in deference to his brother, Karl-Heinz, 16 years Timm’s senior, a member at age 18 of the Death’s Head division of the SS, and dead of wounds near Kiev by late 1943. What now remains of this absent but loomingly significant older brother is only a small collection of personal items, among them a diary, kept daily during military action in Ukraine. Its omissions speak most loudly for Timm (“There is nothing about prisoners. . . . Why were they not worth mentioning?”), as does its thunderously understated final entry: “I close my diary here, because I don’t see any point in recording the cruel things that sometimes happen.” In the light of what those “cruel things” must have been, Timm, drawing on memory, family lore, and his own extensive reading, goes back into the history both of his family and of Germany itself from the 1920s on, refusing throughout to flinch, forgive, or meliorate. His father, a furrier in Hamburg, tried hard to keep up the appearance of well-being and status, but in the end, surviving into the 1950s and sinking into alcoholism, his was to be a “life that failed.” Equivalent memories of his dutiful mother and unmarried older sister strike the same note of effort, sorrow, and the unfulfilled. But above all looms the lost brother, an ever-present barrier between the surviving Timm and his grieving father, so that “my own existence was always called into question,” both by the brother as lost son, and by the brother as lost nation.
History and private life interfused utterly by a master writer in a way at once authentic, unpretentious, moving, and of extraordinary significance.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-10374-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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
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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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