A solid biography that should introduce more readers to Leigh Fermor’s work.
A fondly admiring account of the English wayfarer captures his enormously infectious spirit.
An author of nonfiction travelogues not well-known on this side of the Atlantic, Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915–2011) made his swashbuckling reputation during World War II when he and his fellow British Special Operations Executive agent W. Stanley Moss and Cretan resistance fighters abducted the Nazi general of the occupation of Crete. Subsequently, Leigh Fermor was hailed as a Greek hero and was even graced by a 1957 Hollywood film version of the escapade, Ill Met by Moonlight, based on Moss’ memoir of the same name. British author Cooper (Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David, 2000, etc.) was well-acquainted with the personable, loquacious Leigh Fermor and has edited his Words of Mercury, deriving much of this material from his own extensive memoirs as well as from interviews. What emerges here is the energetic, devouring spirit of the intrepid traveler, who never had the money to be a true bon vivant but who managed to find plenty of well-connected ladies to pay his bills. Channeling a restive youth between ill-suited parents who lived, separately, in India and London, “Paddy” resolved to postpone entry into the army in order to make a yearlong trek by foot through Europe starting in December 1933. It would prove his education, coming-of-age and entree into life as he forged many of the acquaintances that would direct his future, such as that of Princess Balasha Cantacuzene, a mysterious older painter of Greek-Rumanian extraction who took young Paddy in during the next several years. The war scattered many friends, yet his notoriety prompted continual interest in his travels.
A solid biography that should introduce more readers to Leigh Fermor’s work.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59017-674-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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