Detailed, mildly salacious, not especially moving or surprising.
Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink style portrait of the noted actor and unstoppable womanizer.
The pseudonymous Douglas (author, we are told, of previous biographies) admires baby-boomer icon Nicholson, theorizing that his most notable roles—in Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Carnal Knowledge, About Schmidt—anticipated seismic shifts in the American psyche. This early sentence gives a fair idea of the project’s tone: “Loving Jack Nicholson [was] a maze with no way out, like the treacherous hedge that defeated Jack Torrance in The Shining.” The author’s major psychological insight concerns the not exactly breaking news that Nicholson, conceived by an unmarried woman, grew up believing his grandmother to be his mother and his mother his sister; he learned the devastating truth well after he became a star. The actor spent years honing his craft in B pictures, then incarnated the new, countercultural Hollywood in his riveting early-1970s performances. Douglas’s hectic prose swerves to link Nicholson’s antics to larger trends in drugs, fashion, and restaurant culture with mixed success. Fellow rogues like Robert Evans, Dennis Hopper, and Nick Nolte drift through the narrative, while Nicholson’s own musings demonstrate him to be witty, intelligent, but ultimately arrogant, embodying Tinseltown’s complicated solipsism as well as any living actor. (On his outsized fees: “The minute someone signs a deal with me they’ve made money, so what does it matter?”) The author offers recollections and caustic commentary from many of Nicholson’s old flames, detailing his “wild” seduction tactics and inner isolation, but the mirth is dampened by his refusal to utilize condoms. In the 1990s, notable for bitter litigation with the mother of his oldest child and incidents of road rage, Nicholson’s life seemed flaccid and ugly, although he still provided reliable box office and the occasional strong performance in, for example, As Good As It Gets. Rich in scandal-sheet anecdotes—bed-hopping, copious drug use, and real-estate coups abound—but oddly hagiographic overall, this is a flat, uninflected read.
Detailed, mildly salacious, not especially moving or surprising.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-052047-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: HarperEntertainment
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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