An extraordinary remembrance that’s both gut-wrenching and inspiring.
A writer recollects an astonishingly dysfunctional childhood under the violent, criminal tyranny of his father.
According to debut author Crow, his father, Thurston, was as intelligent as he was dangerous—apparently the bearer of an uncommonly high IQ, he was also alarmingly volatile. Thurston spent time in prison for nearly beating a man to death and often bragged about other murders he committed or planned to perpetrate. He was also an unrepentant thief who recruited the author to be his accomplice in crime. When Crow was not yet 4 years old, Thurston confided in him that he would soon get rid of Thelma Lou, the author’s mother. Thurston finally forced Crow to orchestrate their abandonment of her. Thelma Lou was mentally disturbed, and her combination of incompetence and motherly negligence consistently endangered her children. The author idolized his father, nevertheless, and pined to become “smart and strong and brave” just like Thurston, sometimes perversely winning his praise for ungovernable mischievousness. Crow struggled at school—he was diagnosed with dyslexia—but still managed to graduate from college and eventually win a position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture administration. But Thurston’s madness continued to haunt the author—his father tried to pull Crow’s sister, Sally, into a conspiracy to commit a crime. The author finally felt the need to stop his father and found the courage to try. Crow’s memoir is cinematically gripping—the depth of Thurston’s sociopathic depravity is as riveting as it is repulsive. The author deftly relates that his father conceived the conspiracy with cunning cynicism: “Dad’s logic was simple: He knew that if he involved Sally…she would ask for my help, even when she swore to keep silent. And he knew that I wouldn’t let anything happen to Sally.” Crow writes with confessional frankness and affectingly depicts a childhood lost to emotional and physical abuse. He also thoughtfully captures life on a Native American reservation—Crow partially grew up on a Navajo one.
An extraordinary remembrance that’s both gut-wrenching and inspiring.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9974871-7-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sandra Jonas Publishing House
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A wide-ranging collection of essays that attempts to define ``the Italian American experience,'' in reaction to the ``too successful'' Godfather films, which ``have held up an image that has obliterated the reality.'' Divided into three sections encompassing personal memoir, Italian-American literature, and ``identity politics,'' the anthology is put together by novelist and critic Parini (Benjamin's Crossing, p. 410, etc.) and Ciongoli, a neurologist and president of the National Italian American Foundation. Several of the contributors are familiar names, such as Gay Talese, whose ``Origins of a Nonfiction Writer'' looks at the fascinating precincts of his mother's dress shop, where what he ``heard and witnessed . . . was much more interesting and educational than what [he] learned from the black-robed censors'' in parochial school. Dana Gioia chips in with an examination of Italian-American poetry, while Fred GardaphÇ looks at his ``life's reading'' of such writers as Pietro di Donato, John Fante, and Mario Puzo. Edvige Giunta echoes GardaphÇ in her lengthy paean to Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish, ``a landmark in Italian American literature.'' In another arena, Richard Gambino posits that ``wildly . . . inauthentic myths . . . have come to serve as a substitute among Italian Americans for an authentic, developed identity.'' Linda Hutcheon writes of ``crypto- Italians'' such as herself, Cathy Davidson, Sandra Gilbert, and Marianna Torgovnick, who, through marriage, become ``a silenced marker of Italian heritage.'' Parini describes his quest to learn if his ``emotional connections'' to the Old Country were ``real, or just a piece of trumped-up sentimentality.'' Occasionally, the personal reflections become intensely uncomfortable, as in Louise DeSalvo's recollections of vicious fights between her mother and her step-grandmother. Informative and engaging, but perhaps too evenhanded. Too many of the essays lack the passion and the lusty good humor that are trademarks of Italian-American culture.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1997
ISBN: 0-87451-845-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
An effective, in-depth evaluation of the life and work of the master movie mogul. One increasingly circulated variation on the auteur theory holds that certain remarkable producers, like Zanuck, have had a profound shaping influence on the movies they oversaw. But even in these terms, Zanuck enjoyed a remarkable, perhaps unique career. With close to 1,000 movies to his credit, he painstakingly crafted (working at an extraordinary level of detail) an unprecedented string of noteworthy—and usually successful—films, from All About Eve to The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. As Custen (Performing Arts/CUNY, Staten Island) notes, Zanuck ``would not give up the belief that although filmmaking was a collaborative enterprise, ultimately he and he alone possessed the judgment to successfully run the machinery of storytelling and to regulate the enterprise surrounding it.'' Zanuck was also responsible for any number of cinematic milestones. From the first major talkie, The Jazz Singer, to the first gangster movies, to Cinemascope, he had a sixth sense for surprising the public with its own unsuspected wants. As Custen demonstrates, Zanuck, an artiste among businessmen, was quite unlike any of the other men who ran studios. He came to Hollywood during the Silent Era, vaguely determined to be a writer. His real break came with his creation of the Rin Tin Tin series. From there he giddily ascended to the control of his own studio at the age of 31, a position he maintained until he was in his 50s, when in the fit of a middle-age crisis he moved to Europe and pursued a peripatetic and priapic existence, producing occasional movies as the mood took him. While Custen's story has great legs, his writing suffers from feet of clay—he can't resist constantly repeating himself. Nonetheless, a significant reappraisal of a major, often neglected, moviemaker. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-465-07619-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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