Reviewed Elsewhere

Reviewed Elsewhere ABAKANOWICZ, MAGDALENA Magdalena Abakanowicz. Barbara Rose. NewYork: Henry N. Abrams, 1994, pp. 224. $49.50. Reviewed by Andrew Solomon. The NewYork Times Book Review, June 19, 1994, p. 25. "This book will not significantly alter die reputation of Magdalena Abakanowicz ; it is more a competent retelling of received wisdom than a new vision. But Ms. Rose does give us ready access to the artist's extremely varied accomplishments . Her readings of the work, despite occasional lapses into sentimentality, are lucid and straightforward, never reductive, and they are seamlessly woven into an orderly biography. And most powerful of all is the voice of keen empathy and emotional engagement that Ms. Rose brings to her exploration of these deeply felt monuments." AKHMATOVA, ANNA The Akhmatova Journals: Volume I, 1938-41. Lydia Chukovskaya. NewYork: Farrar , Straus & Giroux, 1994, pp. 310. $27.50. Reviewed by Bob Blauner. The NewYork Times Book Review, July 10, 1994, p. 24. "Diaries so dull that any inquisitive Stalinist henchman would pass them by— clearly diis was, at least in some measure, the intent of the Russian writer Lydia Chukovskaya in The Akhmatova Journals, a collection of conversations with one of Russia's most idolized poets, Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966). ... In a world where direct speech has become impossible, metaphor is the language not just of poets, but of all those who would survive. The book is competently translated by Milena Michalski and Sylvia Rubashova and includes a selection of Akhmatova's poetry from the period translated by Peter Norman." 80 biography Vol. 18, No. 1 ASTRONAUTS A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. Andrew Chaikin. New York: Viking, 1994, pp. 688. $27.95. Reviewed anonymously. The NewYorker, August 1, 1994, p. 81. "Chaikin's narrative of the Apollo voyages, based on extensive interviews with die astronauts, is riveting—especially his account of Apollo 13, the mission that turned into a cliffhanger when an oxygen tank exploded, crippling the spaceship on its way to the moon. He brings the astronauts to life, stripping away the gray cloak of ail-American squareness in which NASA dressed them, and revealing the bright colors of their personalities and die fears and exhilarations of tiieir remarkable journeys." BEATON, CECIL (See "Garbo, Greta") BLACK COMEDIANS On the Real Side. Mel Watkins. NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1994, pp. 651. $27.50. Reviewed anonymously. The NewYorker, August 1, 1994, p. 81. "This is a penetrating and immensely enjoyable history of African-American humor from slavery to Richard Pryor— a type of humor that whites scarcely got a real taste of until the nineteen-seventies. Watkins, a writer and former editor of the Times Book Review, has produced an encyclopedic overview of the subject that belongs more to die realm of folklore and legend than to diat of historical archives." BOWLES, PAUL In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowks. Edited by Jeffrey Miller. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994, pp. 604. $30.00. Reviewed by Michael Upchurch. The New York Times Book Review, June 26, 1994, pp. 1,27,&29. "The letters, clearly, are die most important addition to the work [of Bowles] and do much to dispel certain misapprehensions that have accrued around the Bowles mydi. Among diem: the notion that his composing career was neatly usurped by his writing career sometime around 1947; tiiat his residence in Tangier has been largely peaceful, politically speaking, since Morocco attained independence in 1956; and tiiat his relationship with his wife was anything less tiian devoted, even if it did stretch die definition of marriage as most people see it." CALVERTON, V. F. V F. Calverton: Radical in the American Grain. Leonard Wilcox. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993, pp. 400. $44.95. Reviewed by Frank A. Warren. American Studies, vol. 35, no. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 165-166. "Leonard Wilcox has written an excellent study of V F. Calverton, a long ignored figure in the history of American radicalism. . . . Overall, Wilcox has presented a moving story of an unusual, heroic, but terribly flawed, individual whose magazine [The Modern Quarterly] kept alive the kind of independent radi- REVIEWED ELSEWHERE 81 calism and open exploration of ideas without which any left worth struggling for is unimaginable...