Although hardly a household name today, leftist and feminist Rebecca West (1892–1983) was world-famous in her lifetime, writing prolifically in many genres, feted for her New Yorker
coverage of the Nuremberg trials and for her 1941 Yugoslavia history, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
In the first of 22 uncollected essays and book reviews, West recalls a 1920s late-night boating expedition in Central Park accompanied by a silent, often sleeping foreigner who turns out to be Pirandello. In another piece, West describes the comedic antics of her cat Pounce, and, in a third, laments the space constraints imposed on book reviewers by newspapers. In her book reviews, West calls Dickens a nasty man; Solzhenitsyn a courageous and immensely gifted patriot; and Richard Nixon, she says, had a mind “so unsophisticated and so narrowly educated that he has almost no mental context.” Throughout, West is caustic and outspoken. But with a scanty introduction by Anne Bobby, who co-wrote and starred in a one-woman Off-Broadway show about West, and no background information about the pieces, these disjointed articles have the feel of leftovers that won't draw in new admirers. (May)
