Tag Archives: biography

Giorgia Grilli’s Myth, Symbol and Meaning in Mary Poppins: the Governess as Provacteur; and Valerie Lawson’s Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers

Posted on 25th July 2023 by Diverse Voices

Faced with two books on a similar theme, where one is a critical analysis and the other a biography, I am generally inclined to the critical analysis. As an academic historian, I regard biography with a certain amount of suspicion. … Continue reading →

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Jack Vance’s This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is I)

Posted on 13th February 2018 by Robert

Jack Vance has been one of the most continuously productive and popular and arguably one of the most influential writers of science-fiction. He’s also a mystery writer of note. (His is a name that I see popping up again and … Continue reading →

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Luis Ortiz’ Emshwiller: Infinity x Two — The Art and Life of Ed and Carol Emshwiller

Posted on 25th November 2017 by Robert

“I like the idea of going through different careers. It’s like being reborn a number of times.” That is probably the best summation of Ed Emshwiller’s life, from the horse’s mouth. Known to science-fiction fans of the 1950s, ’60s and … Continue reading →

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Colin McPhee’s A House in Bali

Posted on 6th November 2016 by Robert

Colin McPhee, a Canadian-American composer who had much more influence on American music than the body of his music might indicate (see Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds by Carol J. Oja), left behind two books that were as influential, … Continue reading →

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Carol J. Oja’s Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds

Posted on 6th November 2016 by Robert

The music of the East, particularly the gamelan of Indonesia, and even more particularly that of Bali, has a longer history of interaction with the music of the West than many might imagine. Claude Debussy first encountered the gamelan in … Continue reading →

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Jean-Marie Déguignet’s Memoirs of a Breton Peasant [ed. Bernez Rouz; English trans. Linda Asher]

Posted on 18th September 2016 by Robert

It is not often that one gets to read the memoirs of a peasant, because it’s not often that a peasant writes a memoir. This particular peasant was Breton, which is, for those fascinated by a part of the world … Continue reading →

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Joseph Bristow, ed.: Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend

Posted on 23rd May 2016 by Robert

From the vantage of a century later, it’s hard for us to understand the last years of Oscar Wilde’s life and those immediately after his death. His disgrace after his conviction for committing acts of “gross indecency” with another man … Continue reading →

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Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey

Posted on 15th May 2016 by Robert

I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell’s books for decades, beginning with the massive, four volume The Masks of God in the late 1960s or 1970s. (I’m not sure what it says about me that I would jump right into a 2,000 … Continue reading →

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Arnold Steinhardt’s Violin Dreams

Posted on 22nd February 2016 by Diverse Voices

I run across a fair number of musical biographies, autobiographies, reminiscences, and the like, all the way from Berlioz as seen by his contemporaries to Ned Rorem’s somewhat scandalous diaries. The common thread, of course, is that they are about … Continue reading →

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Michael Rose: Berlioz Remembered; Hector Berlioz (trans.and ed. by Alastair Bruce): The Musical Madhouse (Les Grotesques de la musique)

Posted on 12th January 2016 by Robert

If the Paris of the 19th century was considered the cultural capital of the world, it was with good reason: of the major artistic and intellectual figures of the age, those who did not live there made a point of … Continue reading →

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