A sequence of autobiographical essays by poet Rickel (Creative Writing/Univ. of Arizona) kicks off the new series “Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies” with an elliptical whimper. Rickel offers only a few biographical specifics: he grew up in placid Tempe, Ariz., in the ’60s, scarcely traveled, and moved to Tucson, where he lives with his longtime partner, an artist. Here he offers mostly quick snapshots of meaningful moments in his emotional life from childhood to the present, in prose so humorless and smoothly polished that it seldom communicates the wallop these epiphanies apparently packed for the author. In one skillful essay, he tells how at age six, in reaction to vague household tension, he killed the family canary beloved by his pianist father; beyond this striking moment, the author offers scant details about his parents” breakup, though there are several sketches of his current dealings with his aged, crippled father. More central to the story is the history of his homosexuality, from precocious prepubescent sex play through sublimated crushes on a succession of friends, many heterosexual relationships in high school and college, and finally, in his early 20s, gradual self- acceptance as a gay man. He was troubled by the typical conundrums of repressed homosexuality in adolescence—and less typical ones, such as what to make of a teacher’s gift of colorful nylon underpants (Rickel gave them back). As an adult, he spent years pursuing fruitless relationships with younger Mexicans he met in bars; he acknowledges “the racist overtones to my obsession with these boys,” but rather than examine this, he writes about how he willed himself to be attracted to non-—brown boys” as part of a “process of suspending my need for a defining narrative.” Such cold language obscures what makes the author tick. An uninvolving memoir of an uneventful life. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-299-16260-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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