No, this isn't the tale of one man's love for a febrile sow- -it's the story of his obsession with Harley-Davidson motorcycles. An aging biker (pushing 40) who's been out of the saddle since college, novelist La Plante (Leopard, 1994, etc.) finds it all coming back with an Easy Rider rush after he buys a small Harley, the 883 Sportster. Initially, as an American living in London, he tools around unlicensed—until the fuzz catches up with him and he's compelled to attend a special training school, where his lack of skill rises to high relief. For all his (mostly cheerful) blather about the metaphysical entwinement of man and machine, La Plante is a weak rider (corners are his nemesis). But he has Harley on the brain, so it isn't long before he's subscribing to countless biker magazines and chasing the London and L.A. Harley crowds (Billy Idol, Schwarzenegger, Stallone). His love of chrome also imperils his already precarious finances as he upgrades to ever bigger machines that he can more enthusiastically customize. The mark of a genuine ``Hog Fever'' sufferer, customizing includes modifications to both the bike's look and its performance. With the assistance of various master mechanics, La Plante gradually transforms his stock Big Twin Springer Softail into a fearsome road chariot, the sort of rumbling spectacle that stops traffic and earns him the respect of Hell's Angels. He even manages to answer the inevitable phallic-symbol accusations by freely admitting that he's addicted to the masturbatory ritual of endlessly polishing his iron horse. Less a rite-of-passage narrative than a chronicle of a spoiled kid and his pricey toys, the book culminates with La Plante's account of crossing the US with a pack of neoconservative outlaw posers. Fewer Zen sound bites and more butch shoptalk with the motorheads would have helped temper the over-the-hill road-warrior clichÇs. Still, an amusing subcultural memoir. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85884-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
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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