A luminous, erudite exploration of self and art marred by too many outlandish turns.
Autobiographical pieces published from 1957 to 1988 from the late French filmmaker and experimental writer (The Lover, etc.).
This wide-ranging collection opens with a provocative, messy essay. It begins in classic Duras style with existential statements about the artist’s life—“You compete with God,” and “The unknown in my life is my written life. I will die without knowing this unknown.” But without segue Duras is suddenly commenting on the enduring horror of the Holocaust, dropping statements like, “Those who say that the camps are a recognized, assimilated phenomenon are the new anti-Semites.” The other pieces are generally more focused but with some distracting disregard for balanced form. Duras writes brilliantly about true crime, Yves Saint Laurent, the art of literary translation, her dislike of Sartre and Marxism-Leninism, and the magic of having her portrait painted. And she can stop hearts recalling scenes from her difficult childhood or her grief for her son who died an hour after birth. The genre-bending centerpiece, “Summer 80,” echoes her memoir, Yann Andréa Steiner, as Duras muses on the sea while threading in two fables about a boy and a shark, and a boy and his female camp counselor on the beach. Adding in political commentary about Iran, the Moscow Olympic Games, the Polish workers’ strike in Gdańsk, in Duras' hands the disparate mix of fact and fiction yields an overall feeling of intense, poetic vulnerability and fervent political ideals. The book’s translators comment in an afterword on the difficulties of bringing these Duras texts into English “with all her strangeness and mystery intact.” While there is often a thrilling sense of pushing into the hidden aspects of reality, the many hyperbolic and contradictory “absurdities,” as Duras calls them, make for a bumpy ride.
A luminous, erudite exploration of self and art marred by too many outlandish turns.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948980-02-9
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Dorothy
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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