An oddity. The dead apparently continue to tell stories—and a few jokes.
A memoirist takes stock of his life and legacy with a purportedly posthumous memoir.
In the foreword, MacDonell (Punk Elegies: True Tales of Death Trip Kids, Wrongful Sex, and Trial by Angel Dust, 2015, etc.) writes, “now that I’ve passed on, left us, passed away, passed over, add euphemism to taste, now that I am dead, I have pledged the world’s most exclusive fraternity.” The last two chapters also feature writing from the afterlife, one that the author dreads (too many meetings) and another that he would prefer (with a barista, a dog park, and a typically disgruntled Lou Reed). So, the veracity of what is presented as nonfiction must be taken with a grain of salt, and the results are funny in both senses of the word—humorous and strange. “I always said you had another book in you,” says his second wife, who in this book is often his widow, amid plenty of commentary from so-called friends that their relationship wasn’t ideal. MacDonell writes of having no children and why, though a couple crop up in the afterlife. He loves his dogs, he had a string of girlfriends, and he had a record collection that cultists and collectors would envy. There’s a whole chapter about his funeral, with the songs he selected to be played, though they weren’t, culminating in what one guest calls “this bikini party funeral,” and another on scattering his ashes. One is written about the dogs he has left behind, from the perspective of one of them: “Some people, humans I’m talking about, might protest that animals shouldn’t tell stories. Maybe. I can’t speak for every animal, but dogs talk among ourselves, and we’re in a position to see things about people that no human sees.” Mostly, MacDonell riffs about life’s aimlessness and meaninglessness, with very little in the way of professional and personal particulars that might justify how this life is any more worth reading about than anyone else’s.
An oddity. The dead apparently continue to tell stories—and a few jokes.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947856-20-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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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