A sometimes-touching memoir that will particularly delight the author’s friends and loved ones.
Vold’s debut memoir focuses on the 30 years he devoted to the U.S. Air Force.
The author was born in 1940 and grew up on the eastern plains of South Dakota. His father was a farmer, but it wasn’t the most rewarding profession for him, especially during the Depression years. Vold says that he was deeply influenced by his father’s experience when he made the decision to chart his own course. After a brief stint in college at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, the author dropped out and enlisted in the Air Force. He was initially rejected because of his farsightedness, he says, but he successfully reapplied for an officer-commissioning program. After this point, the memoir largely chronicles his successful military career, which spanned three decades; he retired in 1989 as a chief master sergeant. During his service, he traveled widely within the United States and abroad, and was stationed in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The most dramatic elements of Vold’s tale take place then, when he worked as a boom operator, helping to refuel other planes in flight; on one particular mission, he recalls, flying over the Gulf of Tonkin he could see the North Vietnamese fire missiles at American aircraft. After his retirement, he went back to school at California State University, Chico, and eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. Vold’s remembrance is filled with photos and he explains them with plentiful commentary, tracking the arc of his professional life, as well as his developing family. At its best, this autobiography is candidly thoughtful. For example, the author tells of how, as a young man, his horizons were broadened regarding race relations; he notes that he, a white man, had never met a person of color before he entered the military. Also, his accounts regarding his father radiate a heartwarming affection, as in a section in which he recounts various dreams that he’s had about him. However, Vold’s minutely detailed exposition of his military career—including the most quotidian parts—may not interest many general readers.
A sometimes-touching memoir that will particularly delight the author’s friends and loved ones.Pub Date: March 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63417-861-7
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
PERSPECTIVES
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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