Fans will devour this addictive, indulgent, and crafty appraisal of one of reality TV’s biggest successes.
Dishing on The Bachelor, the wildly successful reality show franchise.
A true devotee of the show—“thirty-two years old, single, and Tindering up a storm”—Los Angeles Times writer Kaufman divulges her lifelong obsession with happily-ever-after romance and recalls when she wrote a weekly recap column, created an e-mail discussion group, and even hosted viewing parties at her home, where some of the bachelors themselves made special guest appearances. Though all of the show’s participants sign strict nondisclosure agreements, her book features a collective of past bachelors—and bachelorettes—willing to comment. Kaufman combs through the extensive and gritty entertainment career of Bachelor creator and producer Mike Fleiss (who declined participation) and profiles former co-executive producer Lisa Levenson and producer Michael Carroll, who were known for manipulating contestants using “emotional leveraging” tactics to capitalize on their psychological highs and lows. Kaufman provides a quick but astute history lesson on matchmaking shows like The Dating Game and Love Connection. She writes smoothly and readably on the Bachelor’s regimented casting process, the “ironclad twenty-seven-page” participation contract, and all of the juicy dish and dirt on the series (behind-the-scenes antics, “date pitches,” racial tokenism, Fantasy Suite dates). A random array of celebrities contribute personal opinions, including comic actress Amy Schumer (previously pursued to become the Bachelorette), who criticizes the lack of variety of female body types; reality buffet leftovers Heidi and Spencer Pratt, who used to live-tweet during the show “until it became an unsafe environment”; Donnie Wahlberg (“look, I cry at weddings”); and Diablo Cody (“I think the reason a lot of us enjoy watching it is because it makes us feel superior”). Now costing $2 million per episode to produce, Kaufman acknowledges that the series remains both a primetime gold mine and, artificially induced or not, an extreme cultural fascination for die-hard romantics of both sexes.
Fans will devour this addictive, indulgent, and crafty appraisal of one of reality TV’s biggest successes.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-98590-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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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