A welcome summing-up of a distinguished journalistic career that matches Naipaul’s accomplishments as a novelist.
Last year’s Nobel laureate in literature gathers various nonfiction reports and reflections.
“Guyana was the first place I travelled to as a writer. . . . I was twenty-eight. I was an artless traveller, and was soon to discover that, whatever the excitements of new landscapes and of being on the move, a journey didn’t necessarily result in a narrative on the page.” So Naipaul (Half a Life, 2001, etc.) observes toward the end of this collection, which takes in a range of occasional pieces, some already available in previous books such as The Overcrowded Barracoon (1972) and The Return of Eva Peron (1980). Those pieces reveal, for those who did not already know it, that few contemporary writers are as well traveled as Naipaul, especially in landscapes others know too little to interpret: Congo, Mauritius, India, Trinidad. They also reveal that Naipaul has virtually no peers as a writer of intensely literary but thoroughly well-reported journalism; only Ryszard Kapuscinski and Joan Didion approach his skills in weaving bookish learning with experience into coherent, often exciting narrative. Among the best pieces here are his dissections of the now-extinct regimes of the Zairian dictator Mobutu (“the great African nihilist”) and the St. Kitts tinhorn Robert Bradshaw (all “drama for the sake of drama”), as well as a descent into a true heart of darkness, a conference of American Christian conservatives. Naipaul, who has long delighted in pricking bubbles of political correctness, will doubtless offend cultural relativists with the bit of Western triumphalism he closes with, but it seems timely in an era of imploding tyrannies: “The idea of the pursuit of happiness . . . is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.”
A welcome summing-up of a distinguished journalistic career that matches Naipaul’s accomplishments as a novelist.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-40739-1
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
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
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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