Tobias, premier financial author (The Only Other Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, 1987; My Vast Fortune, 1997, etc.), now turns to autobiography and reveals to the few who don—t already know that he is homosexual. A quarter-century ago, using a nom de plume, Tobias wrote a gay classic, The Best Little Boy in the World, which has never since gone out of print. Now, using his true name, he brings us up to date on his own parallel progress in straight and gay worlds, and on the advances America has made in confronting those, like himself, whose “sex drive had been multiplied by minus one.” His concerns are unsurprising in an-emerging-from-the-closet memoir: how to tell the folks (there was no problem with the Tobiases, once Andy got around to doing it); dealing with losses to AIDS; loneliness; dating and the search for Mr. Right (his type is Tom Cruise); all the many blighted romances and the rigors of true love. Along the way come serial relationships with Peter, Scot, Ed, Tony, Bruce, Matt, Stevie, Tab, and now Charles, with whom Tobias has exchanged rings. And tells of the Renaissance Weekends—where our Merry Andrew became a true Friend of Bill, the Friendly President—and festive weekends at Fire Island, etc., etc. Withal, nothing much here is shocking. Tobias admits to being a good hugger but happily won’t confide further. Yet the text may enrage Trent Lott and Pat Robertson anyhow. It will probably engage some in the gay and lesbian community. The languorous passages may simply bore many straights who wander in hoping for investment advice. Tobias pleads for understanding, maybe a contribution to a good gay-rights cause, and, of course, auto insurance reform (his other constant worry). (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-50111-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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