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OFF STAGE

As literate and witty as a Comden-and-Green lyric, the noted Broadway and Hollywood wordsmith's memoir concentrates on her non- working life, with a few nods to famous friends thrown in as a bonus. Comden's evocative account of growing up in Brooklyn during the 1920s captures a world in transition: A hallway light fixture has an electric bulb on the bottom and a gas fixture (``cheaper to run'') on top; her well-to-do grandfather still has nightmares about hiding from the Cossacks back in Russia; her relatives shake their head when Uncle David marries a 19-year-old flapper who smokes, wears red nail polish, and (worst of all) is Rumanian. As the lively anecdotes accumulate, we become acquainted with Comden's dignified, ladylike mother; her warm, nurturing father; and the author herself—smart, not so pretty, fascinated with words even as a child. The chapter on her late husband, Steve Kyle, is less compelling, though obviously heartfelt, and the obligatory sketches of buddies like Leonard Bernstein, Lauren Bacall, and James Jones seem rather perfunctory, though there is a marvelous, faintly malicious tale of Charlie Chaplin giving an impromptu performance with Comden at a party and feeling obliged to upstage her even in that casual setting. The author dulls the impact of genuinely funny lines like ``I got my decorator through my therapist. Doesn't everyone?'' by descending on occasion into archness; the fact that she discovered a largely French-speaking congregation at an Upper East Side synagogue hardly justifies the crack `` `Vous ne pouvez jamais revenir chez vous,' as Tomas Loup (Thomas Wolfe) once wrote.'' Her painful, honest depiction of son Alan's descent into drug addiction and eventual death from AIDS in 1990 is more representative of the book's better moments, as is her brisk chronicle, both amused and outraged, of the indignities her aging body has visited on her. Despite some glib patches, surprisingly sincere and moving. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)

Pub Date: March 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-671-70579-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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