Customer Reviews

Artistic License: Three Centuries of Good Writing and Bad Behavior

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Brooke Allen is a rising literary star whose prior look at 20th century writers received rave reviews; but ARTISTIC LICENSE requires no prior familiarity to stand alone as another excellent literary consideration. Allen's theme here is the dysfunctional, destructive nature of great talent: her survey of changing moral and ideological systems and the rebellion in writer's lives provides quite a lively and critical evaluation of three centuries of good writing and scandalous scholars.

First let me say the rationale for grouping these diverse literary essays is misleading; despite contrary claims on the book jacket, not all of the authors included led blemished lives. It probably seemed as good editorial justification for compiling these literary biographical essays as any, as they were clearly written for very different purposes over the years.

But getting beyond that minor critique, the collection is uniformly entertaining, informative and well-written. Allen is an opinionated and witty critic, and is not shy about taking on others in the field (e.g. Joyce Carol Oates in one essay). And while this book may act as a pleasant intro to the authors discussed, it rarely scales the heights of either profundity or dazzling insight which someone like James Wood can provide. Anyone superficially familiar with many of these writers will find themselves trodding familiar ground. For the novice, however, they are a very good place to start.

This literary critic chooses unorthodox writers in a haphazard manner. She has very little good to say about the eighteen authors she explores in this volume, similar to the 2003 20TH CENTURY ATTITUDES she had published by the same Chicago firm.

Henry James, she says, used women, first his cousin whose death inspired him to write about DAISY MILLER, and another fiction writer he used for THE AMBASSADORS who eventually committed suicide.

L. Frank Baum's OZ stories written for children reflect life in America during WW1. One wise assertion" "Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it."

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were both involved with Gerald Murphy, who impressed Europeans with his style and wealth. Sinclair Lewis, winner of the 1926 Pulitzer prize for ARROWSMITH, refused to accept the honor. He showed no "inferiority complex" in ELMER GENTRY.

Others included in this 'exposure of their faults' include Thackeray, Hawthorne, Hans Christian Andersen and others lesser known or remembered. It does sound more like gossip than history. It's preferable to commemorate the 'genius' these writers presented, as we all have "skeletons in the closet." It never sets well to "air dirty linen." This book leaves a bad impression of the tale-bearer instead of the chosen victims.

I hate these thrown together collections of essays. They're so insulting to the reader, especially when the author doesn't even bother updating them. Thus in this brand new book we find out (in an essay called "The Self-renewing Jane Austen") that Jane Austen is the hottest film property of the 1990s. Fascinating back then, but we've moved on. "Austenites will soon have a film of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, starring Emma Thompson." How much work would it have been for Brooke Allen to go back and put this essay into the past tense--or better yet, update the status of Austen's alleged trendiness? Show your readers some respect, don't fob them off with these puff pieces you got paid for writing already by the magazines which commissioned them. Reading a book like this is like being stuck in a dentist office with four year old copies of PEOPLE (or in this case, THE NEW CRITERION). Could anything be more dire?

That said, Brooke Allen is an amusing commentator and I can see why editors, hoping to provide a bit of a splash, hire her to write about books. In one case (the last essay, a survey of Simon Raven's life and work) she actually writes something of consequence, something unexpected. And even her rehashes of familiar material have a lightness about them, like Julia Child's pastry. Her account of Henty, the celebrated English children's author of the Victorian Era, has a glowy shine, like the flush one gets while watching THE FOUR FEATHERS. While she's no Fran Lebowitz she likes her jokes and verbal horseplay. In short, she's amusing--laughing gas pumped into the dentist's office to make the wait less painful.

Brooke Allen is the author of a previous book which used similar techniques while limiting herself, then, to the 20th century. Here she goes back to Pepys, Austen, H.C. Andersen, etc., and the focus stutters and wobbles, maybe her talent is being stretched a bit too far.