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1.6.2002 00:24
Last year's favorites from our critics, Part II
Bob Leddy
Kubrick, The Definitive Edition,
by Michel Ciment. (Faber and Faber).
After years of being misunderstood, misquoted and over-hyped, the legendary director, who died in 1999, gets fitting and accurate postmortem treatment from French film critic Ciment. The book is an update of the author's 1980 opus,
Kubrick,
and includes perceptive analyses of Kubrick's last two films,
Full Metal Jacket
and
Eyes Wide Shut
. Bolstered by Kubrick's cooperation and input in preparing the book, Ciment's "Definitive Edition" more than lives up to its title.
A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left,
by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner (University of California Press). Buhle, a Brown University faculty member, and Wagner have combined to present a well-rounded and insightful profile of Polonsky. A screenwriter and director who never abandoned his Leftist roots, Polonsky was one of a large number of Hollywood thespians, writers and directors in the Cold War era to be hauled before the witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee. The authors also detail Polonsky's two classic postwar directorial efforts:
Body and Soul
and
Force of Evil.
Both films starred fellow blacklistee John Garfield.
Baby, I Don't Care: The Life of Robert Mitchum,
by
Lee Server.
(St. Martin's).
On-screen and off, virile actor Bob Mitchum was a hard-nosed, uncompromising character whose idea of an encounter with a loudmouth was going fist-to-face, not nose-to-nose. Server includes us in young Mitchum's disapora as he travels the country on boxcars, takes menial jobs and gets into bar brawls. He winds up in Hollywood and makes his debut as a heavy in a Hopalong Cassidy Western. "Free lunch and all the horse manure you can carry home," was how Mitchup characteristically summed up that experience. The author also delves into the classic Mitchum films, including
Night of the Hunter, The Friends of Eddie Coyle
and the film noir classic,
Out of the Past.
Howard Hughes: Private Diaries, Memoes and Letters,
by
Robert Hack.
(New Millenium). Of the many endeavors that Hughes pursued, the film industry was one of his favorites. He saw himself as a molder of actresses' careers, when in fact he did more to hinder them. Indeed, as presented in Hack's fascinating book, the reclusive billioniare comes across as a replication of the Charles Foster Kane character of Orson Welles's landmark film,
Citizen Kane
: swathed in wealth that simultaneously insulates and alienates.
Susan Sarandon: Actress-Activist,
by
Marc Shapiro (Prometheus Books).
"Biography" is probably a misnomer for this profile of the Academy Award-winning actress. The many comments attributed to Sarandon are essentially reprints from earlier magazine and newspaper interviews. That Sarandon is a social activist is not news; her arrests at demonstrations always make the papers. But Shapiro does mine some nice bits of gold in revealing how Sarandon prepared for some of the parts she has played. Most interesting is how she readied herself for her Oscar-winning portrayal of death-row spiritual advisor Sister Helen Prejean in Tim Robbins's
Dead Man Walking.
Bob Leddy retired recently as a Journal sports writer. He remains an avid film maven and occasional book reviewer.
Peter Mandel
Those Building Men,
by Angela Johnson, illustrated by Barry Moser (Blue Sky/Scholastic), is an amply big-shouldered testament to the railroad, canal, and construction workers who whacked and hammered until coast-to-coast tracks were laid and tall buildings were topped off in every American city. "As buildings tower above us," writes Johnson, "they tell the tales of the cities . . . . They whisper down past it all and say, 'They built us; your fathers. Walls of steel, towers tall, their hands so strong.' "
Rocks in His Head,
by Carol Otis Hurst (Greenwillow) is a Depression-era tale of a man who loses his job but "finds himself" in the rock room down at the local museum. It's quiet, quirky, and modestly carried off -- a real rarity in this era of trendy topics and "look-at-me" novelties. Books about rocks don't tend to show up next to the cash register, but this one is well worth tracking down.
Shipwrecked!,
by Rhoda Blumberg (HarperCollins) is a nautical history for readers of 8 and up that has more twists and turns than a trawler's net. Subtitled "The true adventures of a Japanese boy," the book follows Manjiro, the first Japanese person ever to visit the United States, through his adventure-stuffed life -- which includes being stranded on a sea island, getting adopted by a New Bedford whaling captain, panning for nuggets in the Gold Rush, and returning to Japan to become an influential samurai.
Hamlet and the Magnificent Sandcastle,
written and illustrated by Duxbury resident Brian Lies and published by Moon Mountain Publishing of Wickford, is a delight. "The world's biggest sandcastle," teases the front flap, "What could go wrong?" Well, since the thing is constructed by a puffed-up pig named Hamlet, quite a lot -- including the fact that it gets buffeted by a dangerous tide. Lies, a Brown alum, uses his hazy paintings to tinge the story with a Sorcerer's Apprentice-style sense of apprehension.
Brooklyn Bridge
(Atheneum) is one of those books that prove, at least to me, that kids react to art more quickly and more deeply than they do to text. As a writer, I hate to admit things like this, but I'm afraid it's true. The sweep and tint of Lynn Curlee's paintings, the craftsmanlike fonts, even the book's slightly horizontal shape turn this title into something you and your family will figure out a way to show off, not stash away on a shelf.
Peter Mandel, whose column on children's books appears here monthly, is the author of several children's books including
My Ocean Liner: Across the North Atlantic on the Great Ship Normandie
from Stemmer House.
Carol McCabe
Empire Falls,
by Richard Russo
(Knopf). A wonderful, big American novel set in a failed Maine mill town and teeming with colorful, surly, funny, stubborn, characters who kind-of-halfway love each other. I wish Oprah'd get behind this one. I'd like to see it win the Pulitzer.
Half a Life,
by V.S. Naipaul. The newest novel from the Nobel winner born in Trinidad of Indian parents, a longtime resident of an England that is not home. Here, Naipaul borrows from his own experience to tell the story of an Indian displaced to colonial Africa. Deracination, his theme, is central to our time in human history.
Border Crossing,
by Pat Barker. The new novel by the Booker winner explores several kinds of borders -- between right and wrong, intellect and emotion, innocence and guilt -- through a psychologist who tries to determine why a 10-year-old boy killed an old woman.
American Journals,
by Albert Camus. Although not strictly eligible for the 2001 list -- it was written in 1946 -- Camus' little book is poignantly relevant to the awful year just past. America, he wrote, seemed untouched by terrible events elsewhere in the world. And here's what he wrote about Manhattan: "The skyscrapers in the grey haze rise up whitened like immense sepulchres . . . inhabited by the dead. Through the rain one sees [them] sway on their foundations."
Carol McCabe is a former Journal books editor, now retired.
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