It follows two other fictional treatments of real people: Ravel (2007) and Running (2009), about the Czech runner Zátopek....
The latest, very short novel from the French Echenoz profiles the eccentric genius of electrical engineering, Nikola Tesla.
It follows two other fictional treatments of real people: Ravel (2007) and Running (2009), about the Czech runner Zátopek. Tesla (1856-1943) is called Gregor here. His early days as a Serb in southeastern Europe are dealt with briskly. He’s “precociously unpleasant," and from the start his projects are large-scale, even grandiose. He’s 28 when he leaves for America and is hired by Edison as a troubleshooter; he invents a generator for alternating current which Edison embraces though refuses to pay him for. Soon after, the majority shareholders of his own company stiff him after his invention of an arc lamp. Clearly, Gregor is no businessman. He goes to work for Westinghouse, Edison’s rival, at Western Union; his lectures on alternating current draw huge audiences and make him a celebrity. Yet he remains intensely private and has extraordinary quirks. He is obsessed by the number three. He is beset by phobias: germs, hair, jewelry. Women adore him, but he stays celibate, reserving his affection for pigeons. Yes, dirty old pigeons—only with them is there real communication. This is a wholly unsentimental portrait of a freaky inventor. Our sympathy is not required; all Echenoz requires is our attention, which he secures through his lapidary prose, buffed to a high gloss in this excellent translation. The omniscient narrator shows Olympian detachment coupled with wry humor. Gregor’s ups and downs continue. He lives large at the Waldorf, but his latest patron J.P. Morgan turns him loose after Marconi appropriates his patent for radio, the result of a dirty trick perpetrated by Gregor’s nemesis, a nobody called Napier. This key development is merely outlined, a disappointment for readers hungry for dramatic flourishes. At the end of his long life, all Gregor has are his pigeons, and even they will turn on him.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59558-649-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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