A sometimes-bizarre but undeniably intriguing self-examination.
Balor’s debut memoir tells of his struggle to find his own identity and purpose in life.
The author, a 25-year-old grocery store janitor somewhere in suburban America, tells readers that he set out to write a novel, but his focus soon shifted to the journal he was writing at the same time. This yearlong chronicle begins as a stream-of-consciousness narrative, filled with seemingly random observations on such subjects as the wonder of black holes; he refers to his journal entries as “a cluster of ceaseless thoughts.” However, his quest for self-discovery ultimately becomes the book’s driving force. He constantly questioned the meaning of his life, and he sought inspiration by inquiring about his co-workers’ life-goals. Although he felt an attraction to women, he says, he had no discernible sex drive and also suffered from depression, apparently related to his parents’ divorce when he was 2. Over the course of this book, he tells of a gradually developing fear that he could be a paranoid schizophrenic. For example, inside his home, he says, he often heard voices, and he wasn’t sure whether they were from the tenants living upstairs or only in his head. He later suffered feelings of emptiness and moroseness, and although his interactions with others seemed to improve by the end of the memoir (he made some friends), he also seemed to need some more recovery time. Balor’s memoir is long and occasionally verbose, which he acknowledges, but the prose is strong and engaging throughout. Poems and snippets of short stories offset the personal narrative; they initially seem like asides but they quickly provide further insight into the author: “My aspirations are a ruse / To convince myself and acquire validation / From other plebs as lost as I.” Likewise, his worries about potential schizophrenia come across as earnest; at one point, for instance, he tells of being convinced that neighbors were listening to and regularly talking about him. The book is, at times, too metafictional, as the author sporadically discusses publishing his book, sifts through title possibilities, and even includes faux reviews from anonymous readers.
A sometimes-bizarre but undeniably intriguing self-examination.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-5762-5
Page Count: 466
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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