Word: reader
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...there is salvation in Borges, it is in memory that overcomes the isolation of blindness, that links Borges with Homer or a gaucho-or with the reader...
...second virtue is that a reader with patience enough to mush through the swampy parts of Geismar's argument will find modest patches of solid ground. The author is right in stating that Twain is too little known and understood as a critic of U.S. society, and that the harshly satirical writing of his later years, despite recent notice, is still widely unread. Mainly in the past decade, critics have been pointing out the same thing. But for most fond readers, Twain remains a humorist and pastoral novelist...
...reader must do Geismar's real job for him. If he is familiar with Kaplan's study and the Autobiography, he can pick his way through this book and arrive at a reasonable explanation of the strange shape of Twain's career. Twain's outlook darkened and grew harsher in the last half of his life. During much of the same period he endured a harrowing succession of business catastrophes and deaths in his family. At the same time, as Geismar points out, U.S. society-Twain's raw material -was also changing. The young agrarian...
...Weekly Reader Book of the Month Club or Junior Scholastic...
What gives the book flesh and weight, however, is not local color. It is the lecherous old rationalist Restif, whose expert portrait by Karmel, in turn, reflects more of the spirit of revolutionary Paris than any neutral reportage is likely to do. Karmel nudges the reader once or twice too often to see parallels between Restif's Revolution and those of modern times. But he has superbly proved his boast that "this is the book Restif did not write but should have." All it lacks is a modest degree of "truth in packaging...