More decoding of Leonardo: a beautifully written, masterful biography of the great artist/scientist as person....
The venerable prize-winning Nicholl (Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa 1880-91, 1999) examines one of the icons of Western culture.
For all Leonardo’s well-deserved reputation as universal man, Nicholl devotes his opening section to the artist’s (illegitimate, to boot) upbringing on a Tuscan farm, demonstrating the way many of Leonardo’s future interests and observations derive from this period and from the circumstances of his life (Freud’s interpretations are weighed regularly). Copiously researched, and enhanced by the author’s residence in Italy and his own observations, particularly, of the Tuscan way of life, the book makes logical deductions from scraps of source material. Nicholl gives us short vignettes, about ten to each of the seven broader sections. In each, he asks questions about Leonardo’s life: Why did he leave Florence, in 1481, for 18 years? Why was he impaziente of painting by 1500? He also follows the strings of Leonardo studies—from paintings to notebooks, jokes (dirty and otherwise), subpoenas, studio assistants, cryptic scribbles—and is led to deductions about Leonardo’s sexuality (be sure to read to the end), what he was trying to achieve in his paintings, and the question that seems to baffle all who confront Leonardo’s career: Why was he so successful if what survives of his work is so fragmentary and unfinished? Particularly fascinating is Nicholl’s presentation of the broad context of the era, outlined by one who has penetrated the layers of surviving hints about the culture. We learn about the contents of artists’ studios and of probate inventories, census and tax records, and museum curatorial files. Nicholl understands and decodes the shorthand jargon of Renaissance Italian and reminds us of the frequently autobiographical nature of Leonardo’s notebook musings. Details are compelling in a long book that defies skimming.
More decoding of Leonardo: a beautifully written, masterful biography of the great artist/scientist as person. (Illustrations throughout; plates not seen)Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03345-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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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