For those who find catharsis in the fury of others, this book will be an enlivening read.
The reflections of a patriotic American soldier who was eventually overcome by disillusionment.
Debut author De Veas pens an unusual autobiographical account of his participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He presents a series of commentaries on journal entries he composed during his experience as a soldier in the Middle East. Sometimes the author strays from the beaten path of a linear memoir, providing his observations on a wide range of topics—organized religion, the Cannes Film Festival, the Roman Empire, Hooters, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Che Guevara, swelling his account to nearly 500 pages in length. Other times, sections of the narrative are studiously redacted, though it’s not always clear what motivates the self-censorship. In some instances, he provides a shell of a story sans details, which is so confusing he would likely be better off simply excluding it: “The last passage has to do with an item I redacted. I did not give the lieutenant my word about what I would do about a specific incident of which he was a big part, but he thought I did. He wanted to know what I was going to do about reporting a particular situation. He heard what a desperate person always wants to hear when he or she is in a predicament, but he didn’t listen to exactly what I said when he interrogated me.” De Veas is true to the title of the book: He is one angry writer, and his ire animates every page of this book as he inveighs against his peers, his superiors, politicians, foreigners and just about anyone he encounters. The tale opens with his experience of rage and disappointment about his “six-month train up,” or what he often refers to as his “self-imposed jail sentence.” Furious at his prolonged training exercises in advance of deployment to Iraq, the author seethes at what he considers to be a squandering of his soldierly experience and, ultimately, a sign of American decline. He ends the book with a spirited complaint about the anodyne use of the expression “Happy Holidays” in favor of “Merry Christmas” and raises the possibility that other “angry books” may be forthcoming. Future readers have been forewarned.
For those who find catharsis in the fury of others, this book will be an enlivening read.Pub Date: June 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1451538083
Page Count: 480
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.
Gornick’s (The Odd Woman and the City, 2016) ferocious but principled intelligence emanates from each of the essays in this distinctive collection.
Rereading texts, and comparing her most recent perceptions against those of the past, is the linchpin of the book, with the author revisiting such celebrated novels as D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Colette's The Vagabond, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, and Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris. Gornick also explores the history and changing face of Jewish American fiction as expressions of "the other." The author reads more deeply and keenly than most, with perceptions amplified by the perspective of her 84 years. Though she was an avatar of "personal journalism" and a former staff writer for the Village Voice—a publication that “had a muckraking bent which made its writers…sound as if they were routinely holding a gun to society’s head”—here, Gornick mostly subordinates her politics to the power of literature, to the books that have always been her intimates, old friends to whom she could turn time and again. "I read ever and only to feel the power of Life with a capital L," she writes; it shows. The author believes that for those willing to relinquish treasured but outmoded interpretations, rereading over a span of decades can be a journey, sometimes unsettling, toward richer meanings of books that are touchstones of one's life. As always, Gornick reveals as much about herself as about the writers whose works she explores; particularly arresting are her essays on Lawrence and on Natalia Ginzburg. Some may feel she has a tendency to overdramatize, but none will question her intellectual honesty. It is reflected throughout, perhaps nowhere so vividly as in a vignette involving a stay in Israel, where, try as she might, Gornick could not get past the "appalling tribalism of the culture.”
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-28215-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered...
The inspirational and ultimately redemptive story of a teenage girl’s descent into hell, framed as a parable of faith.
The disappearance of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in 2002 made national headlines, turning an entire country into a search party; it seemed like something of a miracle when she reappeared, rescued almost by happenstance, nine months later. As the author suggests, it was something of a mystery that her ordeal lasted that long, since there were many times when she was close to being discovered. Her captors, a self-proclaimed religious prophet whose sacraments included alcohol, pornography and promiscuous sex, and his wife and accomplice, jealous of this “second wife” he had taken, weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. In fact, his master plan was for similar kidnappings to give him seven wives in all, though Elizabeth’s abduction was the only successful one. She didn’t write her account for another nine years, at which point she had a more mature perspective on the ordeal, and with what one suspects was considerable assistance from co-author Stewart, who helps frame her story and fill in some gaps. Though the account thankfully spares readers the graphic details, Smart tells of the abuse and degradation she suffered, of the fear for her family’s safety that kept her from escaping and of the faith that fueled her determination to survive. “Anyone who suggests that I became a victim of Stockholm syndrome by developing any feelings of sympathy for my captors simply has no idea what was going on inside my head,” she writes. “I never once—not for a single moment—developed a shred of affection or empathy for either of them….The only thing there ever was was fear.”
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered rather than how she recovered.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-04015-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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