A highly detailed autobiography by a unique figure in American cultural history that will interest historians and...
Hart, in his debut, tells of how his jagged path through the music industry led to heartbreak—but also to happiness.
This snappy yet reflective memoir opens with an episode that’s emblematic of its narrator. While struggling to make it in Hollywood, Hart listened to the radio and detected an unsatisfying insincerity in the DJ’s voice. Hart’s desire for authenticity, and his connections in entertainment, would go on to propel him on a remarkable journey through the music world. He left his hometown of Phoenix to start six months of active duty in the U.S. Army Reserve in Monterey, California, and soon found himself entangled in the glamour and grit of Hollywood—that “circus of extremes for the senses with its bright lights and colorful characters”—while working for a company that manufactured labels for vinyl records. His own recording career, though, began one fateful Saturday, when he booked studio time for himself and became amazed at the possibilities that emerged when he combined his musical background with skillful sound engineering. What followed were years of risk and uncertainty and powerful collaborations with other musicians—as well as love, loss, and friendship. Hart candidly depicts his hyperactive, out-and-about lifestyle as a musician and songwriter who struggled to balance the work that gave his life meaning with his commitment to his family. Sometimes the strain proved too much, and his relationship with his first wife deteriorated as a result. Along the way, countless projects with his songwriting partner, Tommy Boyce, rolled by, as did the tumultuous cultural and historical events of the 1960s. Before long, the duo was writing songs for The Monkees, including “(Theme from) The Monkees,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” and “Valleri.” In the memoir’s most captivating pages, Hart recounts the stratospheric rise of that artificially engineered musical group. Particularly engaging are Hart’s anecdotes about his own songwriting process; he recounts, for instance, that the song fragment that eventually became “Last Train to Clarksville” was inspired by a mishearing of the Beatles’ 1966 single “Paperback Writer.”
A highly detailed autobiography by a unique figure in American cultural history that will interest historians and pop-culture aficionados alike.Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1590792902
Page Count: 384
Publisher: SelectBooks
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Dillard's headlong immersion into the mysteries of the natural world—from bedrocks to the heavens, and flora and fauna (from amoebas to us)—places this childhood memoir of life with a companionable family in Pittsburgh's elite enclave in the 50's and 60's. There is less tugging at the rare insight, the wild surmise, as in, say, Dillard's Teaching the Stone to Talk (1982), and this bright, imaginative whack through the "overgrown path" back to the past is more accessible to the general reader. Awareness is all to Dillard. To the tot, "mindless and eternal," playing on the kitchen floor, will come, in the roaring flood of time, "the breakthrough shift between seeing, and knowing you see." Aware as the dickens, Dillard found that everything in the world is "an outcrop of some vast vein of knowledge." The child Dillard will read books "to delirium," investigate rocks and insects, "pry open a landscape" with a microscope, draw faces, and just because it felt marvelous, pretend to fly, arms flapping, clown a Pittsburgh main street. In between accounts of such fabulous flights and efforts of concentration which "draw you down so very deep," there are delightful portraits of a set of attractive parents (shameless connoisseurs of jokes, both ancient and practical) and not unaffectionate views of Pittsburgh's Old Guard, at Country Club play to actually praying (to teen-ager Dillard's angry astonishment) in sables and tailcoats, in their gold-plated church). There are tales of mischief-making, dances and boys, school and the fine and splendid rages of adolescence ("I was a dog barking between my own ears"). Throughout, Dillard rumples up the placid life. An overview of one particular childhood told with shiver and bounce, and another Dillard voyage of discovery as she continues to "break up through the skin of awareness . . .as dolphins burst through the seas. . ."
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1987
ISBN: 0060915188
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.
The debut book from “one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard.”
In addition to delivering memorable portraits of undocumented immigrants residing precariously on Staten Island and in Miami, Cleveland, Flint, and New Haven, Cornejo Villavicencio, now enrolled in the American Studies doctorate program at Yale, shares her own Ecuadorian family story (she came to the U.S. at age 5) and her anger at the exploitation of hardworking immigrants in the U.S. Because the author fully comprehends the perils of undocumented immigrants speaking to journalist, she wisely built trust slowly with her subjects. Her own undocumented status helped the cause, as did her Spanish fluency. Still, she protects those who talked to her by changing their names and other personal information. Consequently, readers must trust implicitly that the author doesn’t invent or embellish. But as she notes, “this book is not a traditional nonfiction book….I took notes by hand during interviews and after the book was finished, I destroyed those notes.” Recounting her travels to the sites where undocumented women, men, and children struggle to live above the poverty line, she reports her findings in compelling, often heart-wrenching vignettes. Cornejo Villavicencio clearly shows how employers often cheat day laborers out of hard-earned wages, and policymakers and law enforcement agents exist primarily to harm rather than assist immigrants who look and speak differently. Often, cruelty arrives not only in economic terms, but also via verbal slurs and even violence. Throughout the narrative, the author explores her own psychological struggles, including her relationships with her parents, who are considered “illegal” in the nation where they have worked hard and tried to become model residents. In some of the most deeply revealing passages, Cornejo Villavicencio chronicles her struggles reconciling her desire to help undocumented children with the knowledge that she does not want "kids of my own." Ultimately, the author’s candor about herself removes worries about the credibility of her stories.
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-59268-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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