'Robert Frost'
By Jay Parnini; Holt; $35.He once said, memorably, that each of his poems was "a momentary stay against confusion." Robert Frost struggled throughout his life with depression and self-doubt, but he was also, Parini writes, "a man of immense fortitude, an attentive father and an artist of the first order who understood what he must do to create a body of work of lasting significance, to 'lodge a few poems where they can't be gotten rid of easily,' as he often said."
This sympathetic reading of Frost's life and work was a labor of love for its author. And Parini suggests that Frost has not been well-served by the people who have written about him.
Early profiles and biographies portrayed him as a farmer-poet full of homespun wisdom, a persona Frost himself promoted. Then came Lawrance Thompson, Frost's official biographer, who portrayed Frost as a monster, giving reviewers the image of Frost as a selfish, egomaniacal, cruel man.
Parini says his own book "sets the record straight here and there, putting in place a fresh mythos, one that combs the facts in a certain direction but does not preclude a future biographer (and there will be many) from combing the same material differently." -- By Anne Stephenson, The Arizona Republic
'House of Sand and Fog'
By Andre Dubus III;
W.W. Norton;
365 pages; $25.95.
"House of Sand and Fog" is the work of a writer who is the real thing, and whatever mistakes have been made in this book, it nevertheless establishes him as a novelist of great talent.
More than anything else, this is a novel about the meeting of people who never should have had anything to do with each other. When they meet, fate is allowed to do what fate loves best: cause trouble.
In fact, the entire book seems like a mixture of classical tragedy perfectly imbued with film noir, and at its heart this novel is about the collision of the stern beliefs of a newly arrived immigrant with modern Americans whose lives have been devastated by a lack of a sense of purpose.
The real difficulty with this book is that the author doesn't know to stop when he's ahead, and the last third degenerates into soap opera. -- By Craig Nova, The Baltimore Sun
'Cliches'
By Betty Kirkpatrick;
St. Martin's Press;
$12.95 (paper).
Writer and lexicographer Betty Kirkpatrick cut her teeth as a wordplay expert while editing both "The Bloomsbury Thesaurus" and the latest edition of "Roget's Thesaurus."
Now she's given students of the language something else to chew on: the overused, often abused phrases that cover a multitude of sins when we're grasping at straws, have a lot on our plate or find ourselves at sixes and sevens, glad to find any port in the storm.
"Cliches: Over 1,500 Phrases Explored and Explained" runs the gamut from "absence makes the heart grow fonder" to "yours truly," and Kirkpatrick provides origins and meanings for every man jack of them.
Kirkpatrick's book should be popular far and wide; you might call it the greatest thing since sliced bread or the cat's meow, or you may think it's just a flash in the pan that should be nipped in the bud. -- By Judyth Rigler, San Antonio Express-News