An evocative account of a man coming to terms with his youth.
Memories of a boyhood spent among the beaten-down boarders who drifted through his family’s hotel in a rural Idaho town.
Since 1919, the three-story brick hotel, complete with café and bar, has anchored downtown Soda Springs, the prosperity of which has always been tied to the notorious vicissitudes of mining, farming and ranching. Schrand’s family had the misfortune of running the hotel during a period of decline—the author’s grandparents purchased the property in 1975 for $250,000 and sold it in 1992 for $85,000—when the once-grand edifice required as much repair as its motley patrons. Schrand (Creative Writing/Univ. of Idaho) sprinkles portraits of these folks—“Kid” Barger, a once famous boxer; Maya, an artist and recovering alcoholic; Vic, the ex-con; Trapper Jim, who scrounged the hotel alleyway for bait; Larry, who shot and killed his best friend—throughout the narrative. For a young child, the hotel exerted a certain kind of magic, which Schrand effectively captures in his reminiscences: exploring the vast basement with its collection of abandoned suitcases; sitting at a stool in the café eating burgers and sodas; anticipating the extra excitement that came with hunting season; building a clubhouse near the geyser out back; constructing a raft to “escape” from Soda Springs. Holding the enterprise—and to a large extent, young Schrand’s life—together were his grandparents, whose charity and decency reassured a boy who never knew his father. As Schrand grew older, work and responsibilities mounted, as did the feeling that the hotel might be a failing venture. He worked out his resentment and anger in acts of gratuitous cruelty and petty vandalism that threatened to mark him for a future not so different from the dead-enders the hotel often sheltered.
An evocative account of a man coming to terms with his youth.Pub Date: May 16, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8032-1769-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Bison/Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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