A miscellany of 16 literary and personal essays comprise the last testament of the late German-born author (1944–2001).
Sebald (Austerlitz, 2001, etc.) was a polymath whose hybrid narratives link him with such resisters of fixed classification as Borges, Calvino, the antiquarian Robert Burton, and Guy Davenport. His methods are perhaps best displayed in his travel writings—for example, those on the island of Corsica (about which he’d planned to write a book) in the opening four pieces here: on Napoleon Bonaparte’s art-collecting stepuncle, a walking tour of an ancient cemetery, and the influence of Corsica’s forested terrain on its history and folklore. Further essays focus to one degree or another on the experience of growing up in postwar Germany and the ways in which that period’s literature was shaped by the phenomenon of collective guilt. Sebald finds a precedent for the relevant intertwining of “Strangeness, Integration, and Crisis” in the legend of “wild boy” Kaspar Hauser, as depicted in Jacob Wassermann’s now-forgotten eponymous novel and Peter Handke’s challenging play Kaspar. He analyzes literary efforts to justify, explain away, or condemn Germany’s militarism in two superb analytical pieces: a consideration of the experience of “total destruction” as described by little-known writers Hermann Kasack, Alexander Kluge, and Hans Erich Nossack (“Between History and Natural History”); and a celebration of those who focused a salutary skepticism on “the myth of the good German”: notably, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass (“Constructs of Mourning”). Brief tributary essays on Kafka, Nabokov, and Bruce Chatwin follow, as do more autobiographical pieces, including one arguing that “only in literature . . . can there be an attempt at restitution over and above the mere recital of facts.”
Sebald’s body of work proves that claim true, and it’s good to have these further products of his life-affirming imagination and spirit.Pub Date: March 8, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6229-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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