A host of detailed, thoughtful, often rancorous reviews haunted by a love/hate relationship with American letters and...
A midcareer retrospective of essay-length literary reviews.
Giraldi (The Hero’s Body, 2017, etc.) identifies the thrust of his critical work to date, of which this volume offers an extensive sample, as preoccupied with articulating the boldness and originality he finds peculiar to the American literary tradition, his own contributions included. Like many emerging writers with literary aspirations, the author seems compelled to join the fray over the Great American Novel and to scrutinize his writerly inheritance from the pedigreed lineage of the white, male, quasi-religious American canon. An unapologetic literary snob who lionizes critics as cultural arbiters, Giraldi enlists in a crusade against bad writing and celebrates the role of criticism as policing the borders of literary legitimacy. He sallies forth against the “commercial fiction” of bestsellers like Tom Clancy’s “lobotomized” “poli-sci porn” and the “eighth-grade gurglings” of Fifty Shades of Grey. The secret to such blockbuster success, Giraldi reckons, is to “never ask your reader to delve with you into the wombs of language, to rappel into the inky caves of connotation.” The author alternates reviews of giants like Melville and Poe with the handful of lesser-known 20th-century novelists—Barry Hannah, Allan Gurganus, Padgett Powell—he most esteems. Though the dense verbiage of his book reviews often recalls an academic’s tone, and he is fiction editor for a campus literary journal (AGNI at Boston University), Giraldi writes for an educated generalist audience and claims to detest academia. He rails in particular against the “unreadable prose” of academics written for other academics, counting himself lucky to have escaped the drudgery of the “tweeds” whose writing on writing he declares “incapable of giving pleasure.” Still, he assumes the academic mantle of metareviewer, critiquing critics like Stanley Fish, Lionel Trilling, Northrop Frye, and Harold Bloom with grad-student gusto.
A host of detailed, thoughtful, often rancorous reviews haunted by a love/hate relationship with American letters and replete with choice tidbits from the author's commonplace book but offering few original or illuminating insights.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-390-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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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