In their second biography of an alluring Parisian woman (Misia, 1980, was the first), Fizdale and the late Gold, both concert pianists, show their understanding of the heady artistic world of Paris from 1860 to 1923 and of the special character and needs of performing artists such as Sarah Bernhardt and her theatrical friends. A mercurial creature, living an assortment of roles, Bernhardt is largely known through her own untrustworthy memoirs, her passionate love letters—in which she admits she ``lives for love with fantasy as my guide''—and the opinions of her many distinguished critics and friends, including Hugo, Dumas, Cocteau, Twain, Shaw, Wilde, Freud, Zola, Proust, Henry James, Chekhov, and a whole array of supporting actresses, enemies, and admirers. Born an unwanted and illegitimate child, raised in a convent, initiated at age 16 into the world of the theater and the lucrative role of courtesan by her mother, she died in 1923 at age 78, the first international film star, a rich and charismatic figure acclaimed for her acting every major female role as well as Hamlet. A thin, small lady who suffered stage fright, she had a demonic temper and insatiable appetites for love, power (she came to manage and direct her own theater), companionship (traveling with a legendary entourage), adventure (flying over Paris in a balloon), and collecting everything from animals (she wore live chameleons pinned to her dress) to a skeleton she kept in her bedroom along with the silk-lined coffin in which she liked to learn her lines. Imperious, egotistical, Bernhardt was often selfless: She turned a theater into a hospital, encouraged Zola to champion Dreyfus, devoted herself to her son and his children, and married a Greek actor who became addicted to morphine. Profusely illustrated (50 b&w and eight color pages), full of the wit, gossip, and anecdote Bernhardt loved, this enjoyable book captures her style more than her essence. The newly published love letters alone are a treasure.
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-52879-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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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