Sharp as a razor: The Perfect American says more about Disney, and the seduction of megalomania, than a stack of biographies.
And, no, there’s absolutely no weighted meaning in that title.
While it would be next to impossible to find a subject who came to a book with more symbolic heft attached to him than Walt Disney, as a character the man seems relatively unrepresented in literature and film. Doing quite the fine job of changing that fact is Jungk (Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna and Hollywood, 1990), who takes on the dream-maker himself in his utterly irascible and unpleasant old age. At the opening here—of a novel whose title is almost as fraught with significance as Disney himself—the old man has gone back in 1966 to the tiny town in Missouri where he and his brother Roy were born and from whence came the inspiration for the layout of the Disney theme parks. Roy was the one who was good with the money, not the ideas like Walt. Of course, the great open secret of Walt’s life is that he didn’t really do much of the concrete work that made his name known in the farthest corners of the world—he just hired the best of the best, put them on a short leash, and slapped his name on their product. This is a point driven home again and again by the story’s resident neurotic Wilhem Dantine. An Austrian-born cartoonist (and real-life figure), Dantine worked for Walt for many years, getting fired just after the relatively disappointing performance of Sleeping Beauty, which Dantine had worked on. Years later, Dantine is practically a wandering vagrant with not much more to do than follow Walt around in an attempt to confront him (it’s a sublime moment when Dantine finally manages to butt heads with Walt in person). More like fictionalized biography than straight fiction, Jungk’s book is a fine achievement, making such a remote, brilliant, and rather hateful Walt Disney a flawed and painfully human creation.
Sharp as a razor: The Perfect American says more about Disney, and the seduction of megalomania, than a stack of biographies.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59051-115-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Handsel/Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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