Reviews by Nancy Williams Faris
Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children
By Dorie McCullough Lawson
Still child-obsessed, but determined to elevate my reading list beyond parenting
guides, I landed on Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children by
Dorie McCullough Lawson (daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough).
This anthology presents letters from 68 acclaimed American actors, artists, explorers,
inventors and politicians, including Ansel Adams, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein,
Woody Guthrie, Mary Todd Lincoln, Jack London, Groucho Marx, Frederick Law Olmsted,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. The letters are arranged by
theme ("Love," "Loss," and "Rules To Live By")
and introduced by a brief biographical sketch that describes the context in which
the letter was written. An interesting appendix traces births, death, marriages,
and children for each author. While some of the letters fall flat on their own
and fail to offer any real gems of being, still others delight with their wit
and wisdom. All provide an interesting glimpse into the lives and concerns of
remarkable people. More entertaining than enlightening, this collection inspired
me to write letters to my own children, so that in my absence they will have
a little piece of me to fold up, tuck away, and keep close for comfort.
Bel Canto
By Ann Patchett
Based on the 1996 Tupac Amaru takeover of the Japanese ambassadorial residence
in Lima, Peru, Ann Patchett’s novel, Bel Canto, is a beautiful story about
the transcendence of art and love. Joined by no common language except music,
the international hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands
still, duties evaporate, priorities shift as captors and their prisoners settle
into a strange and peaceful domesticity. Ann Patchett moves in and out of the
hearts and psyches of hostage and terrorist alike, and in so doing reveals a
profound, shared humanity.
A Natural History of the Senses
By Diane Ackerman
The nose knows. I smell everything and have often used my sense of smell to diagnosis
illness (sick people smell like paint) and to predict the temperature of my steak
(medium-rare smells perfectly meaty). As someone with an oversensitive olfactory
epithelium, I read with great interest Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of
the Senses. A series of short essays on each of the five senses, the book is
full of tantalizing tidbits: e.g., one Roman was so enamored of scent that he
suffocated in a shower of rose petals, and Bach’s music quells anger in
cultures and peoples around the world. These kernels make the book something
that you will read and enjoy time and time again. That said, the book tends to
gets smarmy when Ackerman weaves in her own personal experience as a way of suggesting
that her op-ed observations are some how on par with the myriad of historical,
anthropological, biological, psychological, and physiological resources from
which she draws. Fortunately, the book’s essay format makes it very easy
to move on when a particular passage becomes too purple. Through her work, A
Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman proves that she is an extremely
gifted writer. She also proves that she knows it.
Confederacy of Dunces
By John Kennedy Toole
Feeling in the need of a little humor, I turned to Mr. Toole’s Confederacy
of Dunces for the right mix of misanthropy and satirical insight – and
he did not disappoint. The theme of the novel is summed up nicely by the Jonathan
Swift quotation from which the author found his title: "When a true genius
appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all
in confederacy against him." Ignatius J. Reilly, the fleshy, loathsome,
slothful anti-hero is that genius. Like all good satires, it exposes basic human
truths through a slew of undeniable characters and hilarious scenarios that mock
those truths. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the
publication of his novel. Ignatius J. Reilly is what he left behind. Well worth
a gander.
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