Whatever readers believe or don’t about Andy Kaufman, this book will confirm that particular “truth.”
Another biography of the idiosyncratic comedian that will make fans question what the authors’ previous work on the subject offered and to doubt that this will really be their “final” word.
The co-authors were both very close to the late comic provocateur, as Zmuda (Andy Kaufman Revealed, 1999) was his best friend, and collaborator/writer Margulies (Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts!, 2009) was his lover and partner until his death in 1984. The book offers a split opinion on that death, with Zmuda still maintaining that it was a hoax and offering frequent conversations with Kaufman on how it could be perpetrated, while Margulies, now married, believes that the death attributed to cancer was more likely a result of AIDS: “His bisexuality would be so humdrum today that I considered not even mentioning it, but Bob and I agreed that we would be completely honest in this book, since it is most likely the last book we will write about Andy.” Zmuda, who often played Kaufman’s alter ego Tony Clifton when his friend was alive, has continued to perform as Clifton since Kaufman’s death, while blurring the line between preserving and extending Kaufman’s legacy and capitalizing on his memory. He is the primary author, with interludes from Margulies, and much of the book concerns the roles the two played in the making of Man on the Moon, starring Jim Carrey as Andy, and the tensions between the two authors and the Kaufman family over his portrayal (and memory and estate). There are some revelatory anecdotes featuring Carrey, Elton John, Hugh Hefner (who tossed Zmuda as Clifton out of a Playboy Mansion party) and others. There’s also plenty of amateur psychoanalyzing and lots of exhortation for Andy to return and reveal the hoax.
Whatever readers believe or don’t about Andy Kaufman, this book will confirm that particular “truth.”Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1940363059
Page Count: 256
Publisher: BenBella
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
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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