A story of a 109-year-old man’s life told through a White male gaze.
A journalist reconstructs the life of his neighbor before his death at age 109.
Regarding his motivation for writing this book, Washington Post columnist Von Drehle writes, “I needed to find someone whose early life would have been recognizable to farmers from the age of Napoleon, or of Leonardo da Vinci.” Born in 1905, Charlie White descended from aristocratic Virginia Confederates who shared a family tree with Gen. Robert E. Lee. A boisterous child, he once accidentally set himself on fire while hopping over a flame in fringed pants in an impersonation of an “Indian brave.” After his father’s untimely death in a freak elevator accident, White’s mother designated him “the man of the house,” a responsibility that didn't stop him from traveling across the U.S. in a Model T Ford. During the journey, he remembers complimenting a Navajo man on his English only to find out the man had graduated from Harvard. After medical school, White served as a doctor in the Air Force during World War II and trained in anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic. In 1948, his wife, Mildred, an alcoholic who also suffered from an eating disorder, committed suicide. Soon after, White married a pilot who divorced him for being “a little too possessive.” White’s third marriage ended when his wife, Lois, died of cancer. Von Drehle attributes White’s survival to his adherence to stoicism, a philosophy that requires focusing on what can be controlled rather than what can’t—an approach White was partly able to take because of his race privilege. In a well-researched and often poignant narrative, the author rarely interrogates White’s privilege; maintains his subject’s insensitive language without comments; and quotes from thinkers like Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling but never women or people of color. Despite the nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout the text, these choices make it feel outdated.
A story of a 109-year-old man’s life told through a White male gaze.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781476773926
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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