As much a profile of the author as of Attila, and likely to appeal more to Vanity Fair readers than the Car and Driver crowd.
A Manhattan socialite’s effusive account of the weirdly symbiotic relationship that developed between herself and a Turkish driving instructor with a penchant for platitudes and a diversified employment background.
When Fine, who writes on fashion, art, and design for Vanity Fair, began taking driving lessons with Attila, dubbed by her the God of Driving, a book editor friend urged her to take notes and keep a diary. The present work is the result. With Attila, who teaches personal growth as well as driving, she learns not just how to handle a car, but how to handle herself. Under his guidance, she finds her patience, peace of mind, and consideration increasing and her physical health improving. Under her guidance, he learns to speak better English. After months of car-driving lessons, Attila introduces her to motorcycles. For her first bike lesson, Fine reports: “I selected black leather pants with ruffles down the legs, a tiny silver Geoffrey Beene T-shirt, and some old black boots from Manolo Blahnik.” Details such as this pervade Fine’s breezy reporting. To drive a sports car she rents for them at $700 a day, Attila wears “immaculate white linen pants, a short-sleeved plaid aqua shirt, slickly polished loafers, and no socks,” while she is clad in “a short navy blue cap-sleeved Beene shirt that unzipped down the front like a scuba suit and blue-and-white Monolo mules.” Even the brand of her body cream is recorded. When the motorcycle they purchase jointly is stolen from Attila before she ever rides it, their relationship stumbles briefly, but matters pick up again when they attend a three-day driving school in Connecticut, where Attila learns racing and she practices accident avoidance. Two weeks later she invites him to join her at the Maybach First Drive, a Mercedes publicity event in Hamburg, Germany. By the happy ending, Fine is driving with confidence and pleasure, and Attila, with her help, is about to open his own driving school.
As much a profile of the author as of Attila, and likely to appeal more to Vanity Fair readers than the Car and Driver crowd.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-4421-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf