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RIVER BEND CHRONICLE

Name: RIVER BEND CHRONICLE
Author: Ben Miller
ISBN: 978-0-9849000-0-8

THE JUNKIFICATION OF A BOYHOOD IDYLL AMID THE CURIOUS GLORY OF URBAN IOWA

by Ben Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2013

A brick of a memoir that carries very little real weight.

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A New York City intellectual recalls his childhood in Davenport, Iowa.

This debut memoir by widely published essayist Miller aspires to fall somewhere between John Kennedy Toole and David Sedaris, but there is little humor in this stream-of-consciousness narrative about the minutia of Midwestern life. The author attempts to lionize a supposedly tough childhood that turns out to be quite ordinary, despite Miller’s best efforts to lend pregnant pause to every mundane detail. The mere choosing of a Christmas tree inspires this passage: “The obvious connection between this emaciated pine and Charlie Brown’s unfortunate tree-lot pick was not voiced by anyone. Or, I should say, could not be voiced, lest we admit our life was a cartoon, and ridiculous as circumstances often were, always, on some level, they remained very real, too.” For the most part, we are bystanders to the panoramic film playing out behind young Miller’s eyes, as he aspires to be a writer and makes grand observations about his family and neighbors. His Writers’ Studio, a group of misfit scribblers, is given surprisingly short shrift, but much drama is inspired by the author’s three “mean sisters,” one of whom is ultimately the victim of her own tragic story. Miller also gives much play to elderly neighbors like Mr. Hickey, a cigar-puffing widower whose ephemera spills across the pages like a still life. There’s no doubt that the author has a gift for language, but the recklessness with which he wields his talent takes the spark out of the story. There is also a degree to which he attempts to demonize his now deeply estranged family—he deliberately distanced himself for years while simultaneously wallowing in his own remembrances—that makes the memoir’s primary subject come off as self-pitying and thin-skinned.

A brick of a memoir that carries very little real weight.

Pub Date: March 12, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-9849000-0-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Lookout Books

Review Posted Online: April 9, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DAY I FELL INTO A FAIRY TALE
by Ben Miller ; illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PIPER
by Ben Miller

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ALIENS ARE COMING!
by Ben Miller

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)