A top-notch collection full of information, elegance, and humor.
From Gilgamesh and Beowulf to Elmore Leonard and Richard Pryor, a brilliant critic unpacks centuries of artists and their works.
In this collection of 24 astute, consummately readable, and often droll essays on mostly literary topics, written between 2007 and 2021, New Yorker critic Acocella opens with a thorough history of vampires in popular culture, from Bram Stoker and the Victorians through Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer. Here and throughout, the author’s wit and insight make anything worth reading about. Regarding vampires as “a persecuted minority,” she writes, “sometimes they are like Black people (lynch mobs pursue them), sometimes like homosexuals (rednecks beat them up). Meanwhile, they are trying to go mainstream." In most cases, the essays are inspired by the appearance of a new book about the subject, and Acocella often counters the opinions of previous biographers—e.g., regarding Edward Gorey's supposedly closeted homosexuality: “The worst part is that the secret [Mark] Dery assumes Gorey was most frantically hiding was that he was homosexual. Again, one must ask, Really? If so, then walking around in a green-dyed fur, with half a dozen rings on his fingers, was not a good cover." Refreshingly free from academic baggage, Acocella notes that she also does not feel constrained to separate the work from the life. This operates to great effect in her essay on Little Women, in which she surprisingly declares Jo's relationship with Professor Bhaer the most romantic in the book. She shows us how Alcott's treatment of marriage in her fiction, as distinct from her life, has left "confused feminists" and "displeased" queer theorists in her wake. Among all the delightful writing inspired by Agatha Christie in recent years, Acocella's 2010 essay shines, and "Prophet Motive," on Kahlil Gibran, is worth the price of admission.
A top-notch collection full of information, elegance, and humor.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608095
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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