Intermittently interesting—if only there were more evidence of the “observational humor” through which the author long made...
An odd book that falls into the gap between memoir and essay collection and one that lacks the amount of laughter or revelation that readers expect from an author who is known for comedy.
Winstead mainly enjoys peripheral name recognition. She was one of the co-creators of The Daily Show and its head writer, but she left the show “a few months before Jon Stewart took over for complicated reasons that are far less important than my wonderful experience of creating and bringing it to life.” She subsequently became one of the primary architects of the ill-fated Air America liberal radio network, where she co-hosted a program with an unknown discovery, Rachel Maddow. She also introduced Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold. “This is a book of essays about life. My life,” she writes. “It’s not a memoir, per se.” However, “essays” might imply a series of pieces that can stand alone, which most of these can’t, and it’s closer to memoir in its chronological progression and dependence on information provided in earlier chapters to understand later ones. She calls these pieces “Messays,” which might seem like an unfortunate aberration if the book weren’t subsequently filled with similar neologisms. Her tendency to question her own memory causes her to “Lizzmember,” while her family's penchant for interrupting makes them all “Winsturrupters.” Yet her life seems richer and more inspirational in the lessons of experience than such cloying affectations suggest—as a liberal Minnesotan raised in a loving, conservative Catholic household, as a feminist in comic clubs where there was too much misogyny, as a daughter who suffered through the declining health and deaths of her parents. Winstead also has a couple of very funny, extended chapters: on the robbery of her parents at an assisted living home and of her experiences with dogs and vets.
Intermittently interesting—if only there were more evidence of the “observational humor” through which the author long made a living.Pub Date: May 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59448-702-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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