World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (Modern Library) Review

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World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (Modern Library) ReviewI like Stephen Spender. That is, of course, I like his poetry that I've read as well as his introduction to my favorite novel:Malcolm Lowry's Under The Volcano. I like this book too. But, first of all, there's altogether too much name-dropping, which becomes rather tedious at times. Some of the anecdotes are quite rum, like the ones involving Lady Ottoline Morrel. But all this Bloomsbury-Virginia Woolf business gets on one's nerves (well, mine anyway) after a while. I don't think Spender's homosexual relationship is the most important thing in the book; though it was doubtless courageous of Spender to include it as well as indispensable to getting this book back in print! The most important thing in the book is the difference in the pre- versus post- Spanish Civil War mindset among sensitive, well-bred intelllectuals among whom Spender was a figure. Before the war, Spender says, it seemed that individuals (particularly idealists) could make a difference. After the war, all that had not been killed fighting Franco (and there were many) were disillusioned and glum, especially Spender. Finally, this book has a sad tone that runs from Spender's school days to his middle age. He was a cultured, gifted writer who had not, by his middle ages, produced a "great work." And, despite the Queen's Gold Medal and Knighthood in later years, his melancholy grew worse. He speaks of himself at the end of the book as "rotted by a modicum of success" and admits that "My mistake was to think that my own nature would make everything easy."-The strange thing is that he didn't shake this attitude off. He was only halfway through his life. I was going to make put forth some hypotheses as to why, but, really, it's anybody's guess. Isn't it?World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (Modern Library) Overview

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The Ugly Duckling (Caldecott Honor Book) Review

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The Ugly Duckling (Caldecott Honor Book) ReviewLike most parents, you want your child's home library to include standard fairy tales. Jerry Pinkney's "The Ugly Duckling" combines incredibly detailed ilustrations with a nice balance of both strong and muted colors AND a wonderful re-telling of the generations-old standard tale. In this verson, however, people are woven into the story in a way that I haven't seen before, and I like that very much. It's easy to see why this book was selected as a 1999 Caldecott Honor Book. Pinkney's a very gifted illustrator, and he really has to be given credit for his well-constructed text as well as the gorgeous pictures. Authors who write and then illustrate their own stories are somewhat rare, and as an adult, I appreciate the incredible mix of talent and hard work this represents. My children, of course, just love the pictures; they'll grow to appreciate good writing as they get older.The Ugly Duckling (Caldecott Honor Book) Overview

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Literary Russia : A Guide Review

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Literary Russia : A Guide ReviewWhen I was in Oxford about 12 years ago, I was invited out to eat with 2 friends and another whom I had met briefly through them long before but otherwise did not know. She turned out to be a fascinating but undomineering conversationalist, and quite magnetic personality. When she asked me what I intended to do with my remaining day in England I said I hoped to track down a book but could not remember either the title or the author(s). When I described its contents she said, astoundingly, that she was the author and would give me a copy. (Our friends were neither Russianists nor academics of any kind, and had no idea I was interested in the area or the book, so it was a complete coincidence.) As to the book, it is a fascinating and original reference for any lover of Russian literature.Literary Russia : A Guide OverviewAn enthralling guide to Russia's literary landscape.

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Review

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ReviewI'm giving this book four stars instead of 5 for one reason: this book has an abridged text so I'm judging it on illustrations alone and they're quite good. Greg Hildebrandt needs no introduction and his Tolkien-like take-no-prisoners approach to Oz is different and refreshing; however, I would be reluctant to give this book to a small child because of the illustrations.
The illustrations are either in black and white or in color. The illustrations of Kansas (black and white naturally) are quite good and I suspect that the illustrator got his inspiration for the cyclone from the film. The Munchkins are marvelous as are the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow but the first appearance of the Lion is anything but cowardly as he attempts to rip the Scarecrow to shreds and on the following page the Tin Woodman battling the Kalidahs might keep some of the younger set up nights. The black and white illustration of the field mice rescuing the Lion from the poppy field is drawn from the point of view of the mice (i.e. eye level.)
Those of you familiar with the book know that when our friends are granted an audience with the Wizard, each sees a different "persona". The ball of fire isn't illustrated here but the great head and the winged woman are and the monster that the Woodman sees is in b & w and that was a disappointment.
The Wicked Witch of the West is one of the high points of this edition; I was never happy with Denslow's depiction; it was almost laughable. Here it is easy to believe that she doesn't bleed when Toto bites her. She looks downright nasty as are her wolves with glowing red coals for eyes. Denslow's Winged Monkeys merely appear mischievous but Hildebrandt's appear to be rabid and again have red-coal eyes. The Winkies have an Arabian Nights look about them. "The Whomping Tree" holds the Scarecrow in a rather precarious position. The Flatheads are extraordianry, but once again there are no illustrations of the battle between the Lion and the giant spider.
This oversized book is well worth the money...Dorothy looks like a very young Jennifer Lopez (which is not a bad thing) and the Wizard is obviously a shyster, albeit a lovable one. In the illustration where the Wizard is inserting a heart into the Woodman's chest, the Woodman does look a bit like a member of Devo with those green glasses. I also noticed that the Lion always walks on all fours, never upright and in the illustration with the field mice he's on his back with a paw in the air.
Some Oz purists may not appreciate the new illustrations but I found them quite refreshing. They're different but still done with a great deal of respect. Do yourself a favor and check this one out.The Wonderful Wizard of Oz OverviewOriginally published in 1900, the story of Dorothy's trip to Oz was the first truly American fairy tale. Here's a dazzling new way to enjoy L. Frank Baum's classic story about the little girl from rural Kansas who flew away on a tornado. Lavish full-color illustrations by Greg Hildebrandt, one of our finest fantasy artists, bring to life the world of the Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, and Wizard.

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Naked Lunch Review

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Naked Lunch ReviewThere has been much written about Naked Lunch, so much that the basic facts can be stated from memory: written in Tangiers while the author was addicted to heroin, edited by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, sold to Olympia Press in Paris and Grove Press in New York, made the author famous and ranked him with Henry Miller and the Marquis de Sade, suffered obscenity trials that ended literary censorship in America, filmed as a movie by David Cronenberg almost twenty five years after publication. And don't forget that Steely Dan got their name from this novel but they claim they never read it.
That is the story of its life: few people have actually gotten through the whole book. It reads in fragments with inconsistent characters morphing, changing and altering identities. Dream, hallucination, reality and drug visions blend and merge and disperse. Scatalogical routines take coherant form and read like vaudville humor from a bathroom wall, then deteriorate into filthy fragments and irreverant and often disgusting descriptions of sado-masochistic sex acts. Everyone is a junkie, everyone is gay, everyone screws teenaged North African boys, everyone is insane, psychotic or diseased. Doctors kill their patients, police murder their suspects, drug addicts infect their marks with insect diseases and turn into centipedes during sex acts that threaten to nauseate the reader.
So what does it all mean? What is the motivation or the reasoning behind it all. Burroughs was no fool and he had a strong moral intent all the way. He considered himself a reporter who has entered behind enemy lines, like a photojournalist who returns from Vietnam with pictures of napalmed babies. The title Naked Lunch evokes an image of someone being wised up to what they are eating. Burroughs is depicting the relationship between the junkie and the drug dealer to be a metaphor for all control systems, for all vampiric systems whether it be capital punishment, abuse of political power, police states, etc. By the time Burroughs wrote this novel he had suffered through decades of abuse at the hands of federal agents, narcotics police and the customs officials of all the third world borderlines that he crossed as he moved from New York to Texas to New Orleans to New Mexico to Mexico City to Tangiers, all the time running from the police, none the least of reasons being that he shot his wife through the head during a drunken game of William Tell (she put a glass on her head and challenged him to shoot it off -- he lost the challenge).
Burroughs was a troubled junkie from a distinguished southern family, a Harvard student who studied archeology and linguistics, who studied medicine in Vienna, who went to New York to find work and wound up hooked on heroin. He took part in the birth of the Beat Generation in 1944 before setting off on his long tortured odyssey that led to more drug addiction, the death of his wife, and the bottom that he hit in Tangiers. He went there in the mid-50's to impress the exiled community of writers including Paul Bowels (who wrote the Shelting Sky) but who rejected him because he was just a filthy junky with a gun fetish. Instead he wrote Naked Lunch. It is a descent into Hell chronicled by a man who was to become one of the best writers of the 20th Century.
The events that led to the writing of Naked Lunch is chroniciled in the amazing documents known as the Letters of William Burroughs 1945-1959. These letters were the source of Cronenberg's screenplay of Naked Lunch, more so than Naked Lunch itself. Read the letters first, then read Naked Lunch. Then see the movie. In that order. It will all make sense...in the end.
A book that changed our cultural landscape. It never became dated. It exists outside of time and space, in the Interzone of our polluted minds.Naked Lunch Overview

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