A subtle pleasure for lovers of the printed word, even if they order books from the leviathan.
A set of lively literary essays by Barcelona-based novelist and journalist Carrión.
Even though one of the essays is called “Against Bibliophilia,” this is just the sort of book that bibliophiles—to say nothing of bibliomaniacs—will enjoy. By bibliophilia, the author, who picks up where he left off in Bookshops: A Reader’s History, means the sort of worshipful accumulation of the exotic and expensive—and not just the accumulation of books that forge a person’s soul, but also “a democratic library, ruled by a love of reading, a wish to escape or a desire for knowledge, beyond the masquerade of wrappings that may be a sign of artisanal craft, art, and cultural tradition, but are also a distraction from what really matters: content.” The title essay is suggestive of a different problem: the reduction of books to mere commodities, sold alongside laundry soap and TVs by “the world’s biggest hypermarket behind a huge smokescreen shaped like a library.” This would be OK if we were robots and books had no meaning. They do, of course. Carrión’s essays are broad-ranging and don’t always quite cohere, though if some seem to be padding, most contribute to an appreciation of books and literary culture as things quite unlike any other. Highlights include the author’s meditation, of a sort practiced by bibliophilic writers ever since Walter Benjamin, on how to organize a library (he proposes a trifold division into “friends, acquaintances, future contacts”); a somewhat gloomy visit with Argentine Canadian collector and librarian Alberto Manguel, whose 40,000 volumes were comfortably housed in a French farmhouse until he fell afoul of the Sarkozy government; and a scholarly detective story that hinges on the writer and book collector Curzio Malaparte’s villa on the island of Capri, familiar to fans of Godard and Neruda and beloved of “writers, translators, and architects.”
A subtle pleasure for lovers of the printed word, even if they order books from the leviathan.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-303-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
