Discomfiting, but memorable.
“When it began to feel as though my life had become defined by a series of divides,” writes cultural journalist Busch (Geography of Home, 1999, etc.), “it seemed to be the time to take a swim.”
Divided from a close friend by death, from her twin sons by the impenetrable fog of adolescence, the pushing-50 author wanted to “find a divide that could be crossed.” So on August 29, 2001, she swam across the Hudson River. Less than two weeks later, the World Trade Center towers fell. After that, Busch explains, she decided “to begin each autumn by swimming across a river, some small, personal trial by water that could secure safe passage into the coming year.” By 2005 she had traveled to nine rivers and swum across eight, discovering along the way stories of transformation and renewal. Beginning close to home in New York, then moving west to the Mississippi, Busch captures the character and history of each river. She draws on the writings of Least Heat-Moon, Edward Abbey, Mark Twain and Bill Bryson, among others; the technical expertise of engineers; the practical knowledge of park rangers, campers and assorted river lovers, including Pete Seeger; and her own observations and impressions. We learn that the sweet-flavored Hudson flows both north and south, that the Delaware has swift currents, boulders and deep pools, that the Susquehanna is unnaturally warm. The beautiful Connecticut River has black silt; the busy Mississippi and the Monongahela rivers are brown and muddy; the Cheat and Current rivers are clear and green. Forethought, research and careful planning generally preceded Busch’s ventures, except for a projected swim across the Ohio, derailed by reliance on luck and happenstance. Her friend Onni was usually her swimming partner, and on heavily trafficked rivers a raft or boat accompanied her for safety. In the deepest sense, however, these were solitary journeys exploring an internal landscape as well as connecting to the natural world around her.
Discomfiting, but memorable.Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-59691-045-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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