Search Results for: stoddard martin

Class Act

Class Act EVELYN WAUGH: A Life Revisited, Philip Eade, 2017, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £10.99, reviewed by STODDARD MARTIN Middle class folk beyond a certain age in Britain and its cultural tributaries may recall a social order so cleverly depicted by … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

The Body Dandiacal

The Body Dandiacal The Dandy at Dusk: Taste and Melancholy in the Twentieth Century, 2017, Philip Mann, Head of Zeus, £25, reviewed by STODDARD MARTIN For one who grew up by the sea and sequoias of California in the 1960s, … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Way We Write Now

The Way We Write Now Stoddard Martin goes with the flow The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online, edited by Houman Barekat, Robert Barry and David Winters. O/R Books, 14 GBP. http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-digital-critic/ A decade ago Jeff Bezos remarked that at 500 … Continue reading

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Bearer of the Flame

Bearer of the Flame Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, Mary V Dearborn, Knopf, 738 pp., $35; Ernest Hemingway: A New Life, James M Hutchisson, Pennsylvania State University Press, 292 pp., $37.95. Reviewed by STODDARD MARTIN PART ONE 1961 saw two great … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, Cultural Matters, QR Home | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Mirror of our Fickle State

Mirror of our Fickle State Stoddard Martin “meets” Scott Fitzgerald Paradise Lost: A Life of F Scott Fitzgerald, David S Brown, Harvard University Press, 2017, HB, pp 330 My maternal grandfather was fifteen years older than Scott Fitzgerald, my father … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Conflicting Conceptions of France

Conflicting Conceptions of France Stoddard Martin reviews a new life of Léon Blum Léon Blum; Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist, by Pierre Birnbaum, Yale University Press, 2015, HB, 233pp We have recently observed a French election in which the choice seemed … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Mephisto

Mephisto FRANZ LISZT: MUSICIAN, CELEBRITY, SUPERSTAR, by Oliver Hilmes, translated by Stewart Spencer, Yale University Press, 2017. Reviewed by Stoddard Martin Where is the historian/biographer who can achieve something approaching pure objectivity? Who will try to comprehend how his subject … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, Cultural Matters, QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Last Post

Last Post Stoddard Martin enjoys Linda Kelly’s latest offering TALLEYRAND IN LONDON: The Master Diplomat’s Last Mission, by Linda Kelly, I. B. Tauris, £25 Linda Kelly is a pioneer in the genre of what one might call the non-fiction novella. … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

When the Chips are Down

When the Chips are Down Stoddard Martin reviews a timely tome NINE LOVE LETTERS, by Gerald Jacobs. Quartet Books, £20 We are living through a neo-expressionistic, intolerant era. Famous lines come to mind: “The best lack all conviction, while the … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, Cultural Matters, QR Home | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Hitler’s Architect

Hitler’s Architect Stoddard Martin reviews a new biography of Albert Speer In the rogue’s gallery of National Socialism, good boy Albert Speer usually gets short shrift. As a rogue, he seems on the surface deficient – none of the public … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments