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Title: Renoir, My Father (New York Review Books Classics) by Jean Renoir, Randolph Weaver, Dorothy Weaver, Robert L. Herbert ISBN: 0-940322-77-3 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 09 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Charming
Comment: This book presents a very touching portrait of Auguste Renoir. The recollections of his son, Jean, are wonderful to read and bring the artist alive, both as a man and as an aritst. And if you read the book, you will see why "The Cork" preferred never to be referred to as an "artist," a title he certainly deserves!
Rating: 5
Summary: A good book on Renoir; a good book too, about Paris
Comment: Not only is this a book about Renoir, whose tableaux peer out of every other art store on every mall in North America (what a curious fate!), it is also a book about Paris. Born in 1841, Renoir was older than most of the other Impressionists with whom he grew friendly later. He also had the chance to see Paris as it was before the Commune and the war of 1870. He lived a good part of his life on the Butte in Montmartre and it is hard now to recapture the atmosphere up there among the hordes of tourists. Yet early on Sunday mornings with a light rain playing on the umbrellas of the artist's stands in the Place du Tertre, you can wander freely among the memories of the rue Lepic and elsewhere, and catch glimpses of Renoir (and others) as you pass through the old streets. Reading this book first will help.
Jean Renoir is a very famous artist in his own right, having made numerous films and become one of the most acclaimed directors in French cinema history. Here he has taken great pains to paint a fine portrait of his renowned father, this time with a pen. He has succeeded admirably.
Rating: 5
Summary: Therapy
Comment: We adopted "Renoir, My Father" as bedside reading while my wife was recovering from hip surgery, and (aside, perhaps, from "Goodnight, Moon,") I can't imagine better therapy. This is odd, in a way: Claude was an old man (and in pain) when Jean got to know him, and Jean was an old man when he finally brought his recollectios together. You might expect cranky, but nothing of the sort: it's a book full of sunny afterglow. Every parent would hope to be rememnbered so well.
The book might take a bit of getting used to: Jean has his own pace and his own way of telling his story. We did it in small doses and I'm not certain yet that I quite catch the rhythm. None of the rough edges have been smoothed off which, come to think of it, is just as Claude would have wanted: Jean speaks with his own voice. You have to listen well, but you know that the voice is nobody else's.
I suppose it helps to know a bit about the Impressionists to enjoy it all, but I can't say I know all that much, and I didn't feel impaired. Anyway, God bless Google: more than once, when Jean talked about a painting or a subject, I key-clicked my way to an image and completed (as it were) the picture.
Kudos also to NYRB (this time) for producing what it does not always produce: a finished physical specimen The paper feels like quality; the binding is sturdy, and there is a small but satisfying selection of pictures, both colored and black-and-white. There is even an index of sorts (I assume from the original translator) but it is patchy and incomplete. That last is a shortcoming, but forgivable in light of the book's other virtues. In the NYRB firmament, this is surely a star.
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Title: Renoir Life Art and Letters by Barbara Ehrlich White ISBN: 0810980886 Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Pub. Date: 15 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $34.98 |
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Title: If I Live to Be 100 : Lessons from the Centenarians by Neenah Ellis ISBN: 0609608428 Publisher: Crown Pub. Date: 24 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: ...And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer ISBN: 0425174409 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: 10 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Unknown Masterpiece: And, Gambara by Honore De Balzac, Arthur C. Danto, Richard Howard ISBN: 0940322749 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 10 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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