Overall, Gourevitch’s hope that these interviews will stand “if not as definitive portraits of each artist, then as a significant contribution to such an ultimate portrait, with the added fascination that they are in large measure self-portraits” has been, on my reading, largely fulfilled.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Eco sustains his fantasy with the skill of a gifted writer, but sometimes he resembles the woman who thinks that she can make it on just sex appeal. The studied pose of a gifted writer can slip and leave great empty places exposed. He will carry you forward with more skill than in his other works, and, magician-like, induce you to read the whole of a long, long book, but the final pages miss the target and he – and his reader – has to content himself with a gestures rather than reality.
A review of All Will Be Revealed by Robert Anthony Siegel
The transformation of both Augustus and Verena forms the stuff of which All Will Be Revealed is made. Siegel is incredibly gifted in narrative ability and speed. His instinct for characterization is flawless and economical. He makes as much and as well of his minor as of his major characters. His performance is deft and sure.
A review of On Opera by Bernard Williams
This book will contribute something to your knowledge of opera but it will not be easy to read. The awkwardness of Williams’s English makes the book unpleasant. It baffles me that a man who obviously had such a love for music could have written so unmusically.
A review of The Aeneid by Virgil
I am not a Latinist but I have over the years immersed myself in Latin texts and have a little knowledge of the problems that Fagles faced. Virgil began The Aeneid in the most striking way he could manage and a line or two from near the opening becomes eminently suitable for comparison of the original with Fagles’s translation.
A review of A Writer’s San Francisco by Eric Maisel
In fact, I haven’t enjoyed a book on writing this much since encountering Stephen King’s On Writing some years ago. When I got to the end of A Writer’s San Francisco, I actually felt compelled to go back to the beginning and reread it immediately, such is its charm and inspirational qualities.
A review of The Search for Chess Perfection II by C. J. S. Purdy
Purdy was a prolific writer, and his writing was of such a consistently high quality, that the selection of instructional articles for inclusion in the book must have presented quite a problem. At any rate, we get a generous sampling…
A review of Chutney Power and Other Stories
He is deliberate, meticulous, and splendidly disciplined. The stories are perhaps not original in form but they would serve without degradation of any sort as works by a Chekov or a Joyce. Reviewed by Bob Williams Chutney Power and Other…
A review of One of Us One Night by Mark Wisniewski
There are seventeen poems in this chapbook so that in this brief book the poems are all fairly long. Most of them explore situations or play with narrative possibilities. The ingenuity is significant and the care in the selection of…
A review of The Freelance Writer’s Bible by David Trottier
Trottier helps his readers get over the initial hurdle of writing—into that place of feeling safe as a writer. If you have already written your first article or short story and have a few clips, this book may be more basic than you need, but if you are still trying to find your way into your own voice or the way to approach writing from the more creative side, this is a strong book.