A slim volume graced by lively observations.
A British biographer offers salient glimpses of Israeli life and culture.
For two weeks in May 1978, Fraser (My History: A Memoir of Growing Up, 2015, etc.) and playwright Harold Pinter (her future husband) visited Israel, each for the first time. Pinter, a Jew, felt afraid that he would “dislike the place, the people.” But he was pleased by both, as was Fraser, raised a Catholic, who prepared for the trip by reading biographies of major Israeli figures. Both were well-known, with connections that afforded them privileged experiences. They stayed at an artists’ colony, making frequent trips to biblical and historical sites, often in the company of prominent writers, and they socialized with the cream of Israeli society: playwrights, actors, journalists, and politicians, such as Teddy Kollek, the mayor of Jerusalem. They also connected with Pinter’s cousin, living on a kibbutz, whom he had not seen for 30 years, and visited Shimon Peres and his wife in their apartment. At the Armenian Patriarchate, they ran into Jacqueline Kennedy, “sweet as ever.” One evening they met Anthony Lewis, finishing up a tour of the Middle East for the New York Times; Lewis characterized Israelis as irritating, unable to see how others see them. “They won’t even listen,” he said. Fraser agreed that Israelis are insular but still found them “just wonderful,” even while noting her discomfort with Jews’ “us and them” attitude toward Arabs. Arab culture, Israelis believe, “prevents assimilation.” Fraser’s astute descriptions of people, ambience, architecture, and climate (she complains frequently of the oppressive heat) include Pinter himself. He could be a bit prickly, although easily soothed by an offering of beer or Scotch. The trip was revelatory for him: “I definitely am Jewish,” he announced to Fraser. “I know that now. But of course that makes it more complicated. I am also English.” Fraser responded that she could live in Israel “in every way except one, and that’s not being Jewish.”
A slim volume graced by lively observations.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78607-153-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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