The story of V†clav Havel bears retelling in almost any form- -which is just as well, since his official biographer, a fellow dissident in the long struggle to free their country from communism, has taken full advantage of poetic license to cast her subject as the protagonist of a morality play. (In a laconic foreword, Havel impishly informs readers that the author's notably idolatrous view is her own and he ``can hardly judge to what extent it is true.'') While Kriseov†, a former journalist, might also have difficultly distinguishing between her discontinuous, deadly earnest narrative's facts and fancies at this remove, she's in arguably good company. Havel's own self-portrait, Disturbing the Peace (1990), and Summer Meditations (1992) are equally elusive, if appreciably more worldly-wise, on the score of reality. At any rate, the author offers a hit-or-miss account of her hero's odyssey, which stops short with his 1989 election as chief executive of a united Czechoslovakia in the wake of the so-called Velvet Revolution. A son of the Bohemian bourgeoisie, Havel became a playwright while serving an obligatory hitch in the armed forces. With frequent asides on writers (Beckett, Ionesco, Kafka, et al.) and others who influenced him, Kriseov† tracks Havel's subsequent involvement in little-theater productions of his work that, among other things, satirized the dehumanization of individual relationships, language, and social institutions. Havel's literary output and political opinions earned him no favor with authorities either before or after the Prague spring of 1968. Throughout the Iron Curtain era, then, he paid the dissenter's stiff price- -censorship, harassment, and imprisonment. In time, however, the repressive regime was toppled, sending Havel from a cell to a palace in what the author clearly believes is a fairy-tale triumph of good over evil. Haphazard hagiography that portrays Havel as a latter-day good King Wenceslaus. (Photographs—16 pp.—not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-10327-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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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