The collection serves as a fine introduction to—and commemoration of—an incisive cultural critic.
Trenchant reflections on life and art from an award-winning critic and historian.
Hughes (1938-2012) is represented in this collection by chapters from 8 of his 13 books, along with 125 pages from his second, unfinished memoir. Outspoken and fiercely opinionated, the author had capacious interests and uncompromising standards. “What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890?” he asked in The Shock of the New (1980). “Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art” could offer insights into a “radically changing culture.” In Nothing If Not Critical (1990), a collection of his reviews for Time magazine, for which he served as chief art critic for more than 30 years, Hughes praises John Singer Sargent (“there is virtue in virtuosity”); acknowledges Whistler’s many faults (he was “an egomaniac, a fop, and a publicity-crazed liar”) but finds his work impressive; extols Pollock’s brilliance; and offers a long piece on the “voracious” publicity-seeker Warhol, who, he believed, pandered to “the age of supply-side aesthetics.” Chapters from Barcelona (1992) and Rome (2011) show Hughes engaging an expansive physical and cultural landscape. In his first memoir, Things I Didn’t Know (2006), he gives a harrowing account of a car accident that he barely survived. For more than five weeks, he was in a “semiconscious delirium,” experiencing “narrative phantasms of extreme clarity and unshakeable, Dalíesque vividness.” Hughes recalls his childhood in Sydney, Australia, where he reveled in the family library without the distraction of “that jabbering moronic babysitter,” the TV. The author’s unfinished chapters include an homage to his friend Robert Rauschenberg, recollections of living on Shelter Island, a satirical report of his tryout for the ABC news show 20/20, and a moving essay on the suicide of his son and his failures as a father.
The collection serves as a fine introduction to—and commemoration of—an incisive cultural critic.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4445-0
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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