Sad, almost grim, rewarding.
Award-winning poet Williams (Repair, 1999) looks back on his parents' unhappy marriage, a mix of personalities that was
guaranteed from the start to produce some sparks—and did. Williams's family was in most ways a typical middle-class Jewish family of the post-Depression, postwar era. His father was a businessman who achieved success only relatively late in life, transforming the family's circumstances from dire need to relative comfort. An imposing figure, Dad was a stern and uncompromising man who, by his own choice, never apologized to anyone—a fiercely unhappy fellow. Mom was a lovely but utterly self-involved woman of great fragility, someone who never quite adjusted either to deprivation or sufficiency. Williams opens his slender memoir with a recollection of his first words to his father's dead body, "What a war we had," leaving readers to expect a sordid tale of incest or abuse—yet, mercifully, the family history is a surprisingly conventional one, littered with the kind of little battles that everyone has experienced. Williams explores these skirmishes with considerable fairness to all the participants and that, too, is a nice change of pace from the standard-issue grudge-bearing family memoir of today. Told in a series of short takes—no chapter is longer than four or five pages—this is a thoughtful excavation of ordinary family life, a refreshing change from the usual tiresome dirty laundry. Williams brings a poet's sensibility to the world of familiar people and common pursuits, and he is capable of carrying an unusual amount of insight into the psychology of family life. As more boomer-generation writers age (and as more of their parents die), we can expect to see an ever-growing number of such memoirs—but probably very few of them will be better written than this.
Sad, almost grim, rewarding.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-19984-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A real-life Frank Capra tale, just as corny, sentimental and inspiring as It's a Wonderful Life.
Hokey but charming memoir, reminiscent of an afternoon spent flipping through the pages of an antique photo album.
Although an autobiography, Coleman chronicles his life in the third person with a dispassion and modesty remarkable for a novice writer. It is perhaps the era that speaks through his prose—not a child of the "Me Decade," Coleman reminds us that the past was, indeed, more difficult than the present. And people certainly tended to whine a good deal less back then. The account begins chronologically, with his birth in 1902 to pioneer parents, their eighth child. By the time he was nine, the family had moved to their own homestead in Myrtle Creek, Ore. That summer he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. Overcoming his crippled condition occupied a good portion of his youth, admirably marked by self-reliance and invention. He whittled his own crutches, made violins and, at 19, attempting to find a trade that would accommodate his physical condition, paid a jeweler $25 per month in order to serve as an apprentice to the watchmaker. As a young man in the '20s, he married and became a father, then established himself as sole proprietor of a jewelry store. The narrative is interspersed with photographs, newspaper clippings, Coleman's poems (an unfortunate weakness), musical scores (also not very solid), jewelry designs and the Coleman family tree. At a glance, Coleman’s history, aside from his disability, is not unusual. He becomes one of the leading merchants of a small town, state archery champion, and president of the Lion's Club. His would seem to be the unremarkable chronicle of a small-town success of interest to no one outside his family. Even so, it's his banality that is oddly compelling. Following the ups and downs of the Coleman jewelry store through the Depression, World War II, and the post-war era up until Coleman's death in 1972, is an enjoyable journey through the low-key strength and integrity that sustains middle-American lives. Coleman's son, John Coleman, today runs Coleman's Jewelers, the jewelry store founded by the author, in Corvallis, Ore. (Proceeds from the sale of this book, which has an endorsement from former senator Bob Dole, will go to Rotary International's "effort to eradicate polio" and to the Austin Family Business Program at Oregon State University.)
A real-life Frank Capra tale, just as corny, sentimental and inspiring as It's a Wonderful Life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9754140-0-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Meet Norma Hazelton, connoisseur and collector of swizzle sticks. If you're not impressed by a plastic Jackie Gleason long since separated from its maraschino cherry, take a look at Robert Cade, inventor of Gatorade and a collector of Studebakers (re the carmaker's Dictator line of the 1930s, he says: ``Dictator was a good name until Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. They dropped the Dictator line in 1937 because of them''). Among the 20 collections that Tuchman and photographer Brenner cast their eyes on are caches of Civil War memorabilia (a banjo, a musket, a toothbrush); aquarium furniture (a lot of mermaids); and representations of the Last Supper (a clock, a saltshaker, a funeral-home fan). Tuchman's text, mostly a pastiche of comments from the collectors themselves, is informative—and just glib enough to keep the whole book from feeling like a spooky visit to your mad Aunt Mabel's attic.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0360-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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