Oates’ view of art as mystic experience produces a rigid, constrictive framework for analysis that discriminates against individualism, personality, and the romantic tradition. “Art,” she contends, “is the sacralizing of its subject,” and therefore iconoclasm may be perceived as failure, limitation, or even neurosis. Much of contemporary poetry and fiction in her opinion is “fixated…upon the childhood fears of annihilation, persecution, the helplessness we have all experienced…” So much for Robbe-Grillet, Pynchon, Barthelme, Purdy, Barth. And so much for Sylvia Plath who is “more honest than we would like” anyway. Alternatively, we have this somewhat overwritten, over-sacralized Lawrentian ideal: “it was his life’s pilgrimage to break through the confines of the static, self-consuming self in order to experience the unfathomable power that transcended his own knowledge of himself.” The nine essays in this collection, previously published in prestigious literary journals, also include rather pedestrian commentaries on the later James and Virginia Woolf, Beckett’s trilogy, Flannery O’Connor’s Catholicism, Norman Mailer’s “energetic Manichaenism” (which “forbids a higher art”). Oates’ last word is on “Kafka’s Paradise” – a Taoistic conception of that tortured genius as not a tragic but a religious writer, non-egoistic and beyond Good and Evil. As criticism, this is windy sermonizing at the expense of the integrity of art, artist, and the creative process.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1974
ISBN: 0814907431
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Vanguard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1974
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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