From the great New York stage actress (a.k.a. Murphy Brown's mother), a memoir as unconventional and captivating as she was. When Dewhurst died in 1991, she had roughed out about two-thirds of her autobiography with the assistance of Viola, who typed, edited, and organized her spoken recollections. He completed the book by interviewing friends, coworkers, and family, weaving their memories into Dewhurst's account to create a vivid portrait of her powerful personality and the warm response she prompted in others. Despite her famous sociability—her country home was virtually a commune for kids, animals, and anyone in trouble- -Dewhurst was in many ways very private; it is primarily from the comments of others that we glean details of her two stormy marriages to George C. Scott and her mother's Christian Science faith, which influenced her decision not to seek medical treatment for the cervical cancer that killed her. Her narrative focuses on her career, paying generous tribute to mentors like Harold Clurman, colleagues like Joe Papp (she acted in many of the New York Shakespeare Festival's early productions), and collaborators like director Jose Quintero and costar Jason Robards, with whom she created the magical 1974 revival of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten that made her a star at age 49. Dewhurst was the premier interpreter of O'Neill's female characters—she appeared in Desire Under the Elms, Long Day's Journey into Night, and Ah, Wilderness!—and she also worked frequently with Edward Albee; her thoughts on these two important American playwrights are illuminating, though she does not discuss her performances in much detail. She speaks appreciatively on occasion of the professionalism she found working on television shows like Murphy Brown, but the entire text glows with her love for the theater as an art and an occupation—concern for the latter made her active in the Actors' Fund and a two-term president of Actors' Equity. A moving human document as well as a fine theater autobiography.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-80701-7
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
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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