reviews ‘areoporto,’” he says, wondering, “does only one of these have the right / to launch aeroplanes // or is it all the same to pilots.” In “bethlehem,” Mikołajewski opens with a stunning first line: “liking myself is not my thing.” This sentiment travels throughout his collection : in “at the intersection,” he wonders what street beggars think of him—and even worse—what they might do to him, as he drives by in his car; in “A love confession to my wife who together with our children is about to travel by plane,” the title a poem in itself, he painfully visualizes his daughters and wife crashing while he sits at home; finally, in the concise and alarming “Anxieties,” he imagines a thief lurking after his brother and “osteoporosis hallowing [his] mother’s bones,” while “nothing lies in ambush for [him].” Froth is a mixture of short, striking poems and long, meditative pieces , both equally interesting in their own right. Because his poems are personal yet universal, readers will absorb a sliver of Mikołajewski’s life while also learning about themselves. Rachel Gellman San Diego, California Miscellaneous Adam Gopnik. Winter: Five Windows on the Season. London. Quercus. 2012. isbn 9781780874449 Anyone who has written scholarly articles will rightly revere someone who has read so widely and carries learning so gracefully. To have pushed through thickets of academic prose and emerged without a scratchy style is a testament to the author’s character . Sporting an impressive bibliography and thorough index, Adam Gopnik’s Winter is both lively and accessible. Five essays (“windows”) set up the different ways we view or engage with winter: Romantic Winter, Radical , Recuperative, and Recreational, with a reflective summary entitled “Remembering Winter.” Romantic Winter features nineteenth-century depictions of winter in the arts, first as compared with earlier depictions and then as subsequent compos72 World Literature Today Amélie Nothomb Life Form Alison Anderson, tr. Europa When a successful, well-known French author engages in a prolonged correspondence with a troubled American fan, both of their identities are brought into question. Life Form is a probing exploration of the meaning of friendship and human connection. Amélie Nothomb skillfully constructs an absorbing maze of psychological entanglement and escape. Fumi Nakamura Enma the Immortal Neil Nadelman, tr. Vertical A young samurai’s life is saved by a tattoo artist who leaves him with a strange Sanskrit character permanently inscribed on his palm. Enma the Immortal is a tale of mystery and fantasy that begins in the last years of the Edo period and makes its way darkly toward Hiroshima. Nota Bene ers, artists, writers, and celebrants modify them. “Radical Winter” is the long or even endless winter of the north and far south, and the essay of that title features the expeditions to reach the North and South Poles through the memoirs of the participants . In many ways, the most interesting essay focuses on the recuperative or restorative themes that emerge through winter celebrations , especially Christmas and the carols, fiction, poetry, music, and commercialism that cluster around that holiday. Gopnik almost rescues my interest in Dickens’s “Christmas Carol” in this chapter. Skating, sledding , and especially ice hockey— Gopnik is Canadian—are featured in “Recreational Winter.” In each essay, defining the perspective is primary, with a background leading up to selected examples of that perspective. Extension is geographic rather than chronological , as Gopnik distinguishes among European, British, and North American versions of the same perspective. An academic reader may miss the page-by-page footnoting or endnoting . More importantly, such a reader may want more examples, a more detailed history of the development of each perspective on winter—particularly those examples that would suggest the extent to which the perspectiveenteredpopularculture .Butthose concessions to a general readership, as well as slim references to secondary sources in the body of the book, make for an unencumbered enjoyment of the flow of ideas and themes. This academic reviewer regrets only the inability to credit Gopnik for those ideas and connections that are his alone. Except, that is, in “Recreational Winter,” where the author-as-fan— and fan-as-fanatic—perhaps too lovingly dissects and theorizes Canada’s national sport. In so...
Read full abstract
Aug 16, 2017
Neil O'Boyle 
Open Access
