Seleções PenAzul
Books Update from NYTimes.com
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Sun, 31 Dec 2000 22:32:05 -0500
The Correspondence of an Eminent Patriarch
December 31, 2000
Ambassador in Spite of Himself
Joseph P. Kennedy's correspondence shows a man entirely incapable of mediating.
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Joseph P. Kennedy's Letters
2. Also Reviewed This Week: Recent Paul Celan Translations
3. Featured Author: Tennessee Williams
4. Featured Audio: Tennessee Williams Reads From His Work
5. New in Stores: Short Stories by Ann Beattie
6. In the News: Alice Walker, Explorer of Human Terrain
7. New on the Best-Seller List
8. In the Forums: Alejo Carpentier
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Joseph P. Kennedy's Letters
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"Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy,"
Edited by Amanda Smith
The letters of Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch of the Kennedy clan, have been edited by his granddaughter, Amanda Smith. Thomas Mallon, the author of the historical novels "Henry and Clara" and "Dewey Defeats Truman," says the book, more than 800 pages in length, "shows a man of outsize sentiment -- a poignant, misunderstood dragon, more complicated, perhaps, than any of his children except Bobby, that other improbable combination of rapacity and romance." Kennedy was, however, a careful letter writer. Readers of "Hostage to Fortune" will look in vain for confirmation of
the financier's affair with Gloria Swanson or of his "storied bootlegging." Kennedy "believed in not writing 'anything down that you wouldn't want published on the front page of The New York Times.'" The letters "with all sorts of other family correspondence and documentation, including Rose Kennedy's round-robin letters to the children and their own school compositions and diaries. As editorial strategies
go, this one is interesting but debatable. The 'documentary cubism' Smith says she hopes to achieve comes across more as a jaunty, boosterish newsreel. A reader sometimes can't help feeling he's being hustled by one more start-up of the
family P.R. machine."
HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE
The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy.
Edited by Amanda Smith.
Illustrated. 738 pp. New York:
Viking. $39.95.
2. Also Reviewed This Week: Recent Paul Celan Translations
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A Poet at War With His Language
In an essay offering an overview of the work of Paul Celan, a Jewish poet who lost both his parents in a Nazi death camp and who came of age poetically during the Holocaust,
Columbia professor Mark M. Anderson says, "With its fragmented words, multilingual puns and recondite allusions, the verse of Paul Celan -- arguably the greatest European poet in the postwar period -- hovers on the edge of untranslatability." Yet three new versions of his work have been published. Anderson offers a detailed evaluation of each of the volumes. Celan, who committed suicide in 1970, believed that poetry was "caught in a condition of wandering between borders and language and historical epochs. Poetry is translation, he might have said; in different ways these three new collections tell us why."
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"Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism," by George Soros
George Soros is widely known as "one of the greatest currency speculators who ever lived and a creative philanthropist to boot," writes Sylvia Nasar, a former Times
correspondent. But his new book, she says, is "only a marginally better book than the windy and portentous 'Crisis of Global Capitalism,' published just two years ago -- and
then mostly because in the new book Soros recants some of his old conclusions. It's a shame. Buried under all those vague philosophical musings, pretentious phrases
('reflexivity,' 'radical fallibility') and grandiose proposals, Soros is correct in saying that capitalist economies tend to be unstable and that the source of instability can usually be traced to the logic -- or illogic -- of financial markets."
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"Our Vietnam: The War, 1954-1975," by A. J. Langguth
"With the Vietnam War now more than 25 years behind us, it might seem odd to refer to a new history of the conflict as timely," writes Arnold R. Isaacs, who covered the war for the Baltimore Sun. "But that is the right word for A. J. Langguth's dense, sober, fair-minded study, which comes out at a time when our memories of the war are beginning to be covered over by a rose-colored haze of self-forgiveness." Langguth, a former Saigon bureau chief for The Times, "lets the facts speak for themselves, for the most part. But his account forcefully reminds us of the unwelcome but inescapable truth: that America's war in Vietnam was a colossal, costly, unnecessary failure, brought about by men who were smart but not wise and whose mistakes left wounds
in American institutions that have still not healed."
3. Featured Author: Tennessee Williams
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"The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams: Volume I, 1920-1945,"
edited by Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler
This retrospective includes reviews of the original productions of "The Glass Menagerie" (1945), "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947), "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955) and others, reviews of Williams's books, interviews, essays by Williams and his 1983 obituary.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams.html?1229bk
4. Featured Audio: Tennessee Williams Reads From His Works
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Tennessee Williams reads six of his poems and a short story, from a recording of an evening at the 92nd Street Y, Nov. 22, 1982, one of his last public appearances before his
death three months later.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams.html#audio?1229bk
5. New in Stores: Short Stories by Ann Beattie
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"Perfect Recall: New Stories," by Ann Beattie, January, 2000
Eleven new stories from the winner of the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.
6. In the News: Alice Walker, Explorer of Human Terrain
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With her new book of stories, "The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart," Alice Walker, who became a Pulitzer Prize winner with her third novel, "The Color Purple," focuses on marriage, love and the end of love.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/arts/26WALK.html?1229bk
For a digest of this week's book news, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/arts/26WALK.html?1229bk
7. New on the Best-Seller List
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Hardcover Nonfiction
#13) "And the Fans Roared," by Joe Garner
Forty-three memorable sports events since the 1940's recalled in words and photographs and on two CD's narrated by Bob Costas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/arts/26WALK.html?1229bk
8. In the Forums: Alejo Carpentier
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The Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier is a favorite of the participants in our Latin American Literature forum. Little known in North America, Carpentier is considered one of the pioneers of "magical realist" fiction, a term he is credited with coining. Readers will soon begin a consideration of Carpentier's 1974 short novel, "Baroque Concerto," a fantastical tale, spanning centuries and continents, in which the author makes use of his extensive knowledge of musicology.
Beginning next week, the Reading Group will begin its discussion of Robert Hughes's "The Fatal Shore," a history of the founding of Australia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/arts/26WALK.html?1229bk
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